


Learning to Lose

by raitala



Series: Merely Players [2]
Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-09
Updated: 2011-08-09
Packaged: 2017-10-22 10:37:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 24,509
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/237182
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/raitala/pseuds/raitala
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's been six years since Eames last worked with Arthur and Cobb, but the chance to work an Inception isn't one he can pass up. Eames is definitely still a bit of a bastard, but something about Arthur pushes him out of his comfort zone. Eames has always been a player and always focused on winning, but maybe this time he needs to learn to lose.</p><p>Enormous thanks to my painstaking and thoughtful betas Blamebrampton and Pingrid ♥♥♥</p>
            </blockquote>





	Learning to Lose

**Learning to Lose**

 _I: Mombasa_

“All right, Hugo, who the fuck was that?”

“I don’t know?”

“Because it appeared very much like she was his fucking sister! Only how could he have a sister that we didn’t know about? A sister, whose presence has quite categorically shot all our plans to fuck?”

“I don’t know, Eames. I swear! I don’t know! She didn’t come up in any of the searches.”

“Then they weren’t good enough fucking searches, were they, Hugo?”

“I don’t understand!” Hugo babbled, his eyes white with panic.

“Listen to me!” barked Eames. “I’m going to shoot you now.” Hugo let out a little whine of fear. “I’m going to shoot you. You are going to wake up. You are going to tell Allegra that we need another fifteen minutes under. Tell her to call Billy to bring round the car to the kitchen entrance because we are going to need to get away smartish. You are then going to sit tight, because we will need you to clear the site when we are done, but after that you are going to fuck the fuck off, and if I ever see you again, then I’m going to pull your fucking incompetent head off. Are you clear about this?” Eames pinched Hugo’s jaw tightly between his fingers, grinding the flesh of his cheeks into his teeth.

“Murph, Eames!” Hugo mumbled. Eames pulled his pistol from the waistband of his trousers and shot him.

In the end, he’d only managed to get a fraction of the information they’d needed and it had been extremely tight getting the team clear. With the extra bribes they’d had to pay to keep things quiet, they were down on the whole deal.

He was still in a foul mood when Cobb found him.

“You can rub them together all you want, they’re not going to breed.”

*

“Arthur? You still working with that stick in the mud?”

“He’s good at what he does.”

“Oh, he’s the best.”

Of course he knew Cobb and Arthur were still working together. You didn’t work in this field without being aware of the big players. In the last three months, there’d been a fair bit of gossip about Cobb’s flight from US law enforcement. The news that Cobb and Arthur were working international and high stakes jobs again had sent out ripples across the industry. It had come after a couple of years when the general consensus had been that Cobb’s team was slipping in the rankings – that, as a family man, he was losing his drive and his touch.

Eames had always kept half an ear cocked. Mostly, it had seemed to him that Cobb was just being more selective, taking only the more challenging, more highly paid, less dangerous jobs. He’d noticed Mal working less often, then not at all.

Eames had heard of Mal’s death while working a job in Nairobi. He’d given a passing wistful thought to a woman both genuinely beautiful and passionate in her pushing of boundaries in dream-time. Only a passing thought though. She wasn’t the only colleague he’d lost in the last six years. The industry was getting increasingly ... competitive. It had become part of the regular arsenal of those whose business was power: mafia, militia, and the more literally cut-throat end of international corporate and governmental security operations.

Eames had never been drawn to violence in and of itself – if you didn’t count a certain weakness for mucking about with heavy artillery – but it had ceased to be an avoidable element of the job unless you stuck to the very shallowest ends of corporate espionage and marital infidelity. It was part of his life now: stashes of money and guns in different cities, different identities, looking over his shoulder.

It was still a great game to be in, still accelerating, with unknown horizons. Eames didn’t work with a regular team any more, but freelanced. Offering your skills to the highest bidder, with no fixed loyalties, was the best way of getting offered a good rate; with the added advantage that when people wanted you out of the way, they were more likely to offer to buy you than to shoot you.

Not getting shot continued to be high on Eames’ list of priorities. ‘The living dog is better than the dead lion,’ he would say when people questioned the extent and fragility of his loyalties.

Eames was satisfied that the people who needed to know knew he was the best at what he did; that if you paid him enough, he would get the job done, as long as you provided him with the necessary protection. They also knew that he wouldn’t lay his life on the line for anyone. He was a skilled professional, not a foot soldier.

He’d wondered about when he might work with Cobb again. The industry wasn’t that big. He’d wired him the money he’d ‘borrowed’, once he’d got himself settled in Lagos, where he’d based himself the first few years in Africa. He hadn’t wanted to completely burn his bridges with Cobb’s team. Still, he hadn’t heard from them and had decided that it was likely that Cobb or Arthur, or both of them, still considered him too flaky to work with.

It stung a bit, but there were other teams, new teams, doing interesting work. He’d carved out a niche for himself and though work wasn’t the wild romp it had been for those first few years. It was satisfying to be able to pick the jobs you wanted and work, most of the time, with competent players.

It hadn’t exactly been his finest hour, totally stalling the Paris job and running off to Morocco with his tail between his legs. With Cobb’s reappearance, he’d felt a twinge of discomfort at being reminded of past mistakes; his memory shedding six years and going back to the too-cocky, flashily brilliant kid Cobb had known.

But this, though … there was no way he was turning down this job. _Inception._ He’d been wanting to have a proper go at that, with a serious team, serious backing, for a good couple of years now. It had almost worked with Philippé. There’d been flaws, both in their approach and in the job set-up that had doomed it to failure. Since then he hadn’t come across anyone of the calibre he was prepared to work with who was prepared to consider the idea as anything other than late-night, end-of-job-drinks, idle moonshine. He knew it could be done. To be precise, he knew _he_ could do it.

“A job like this requires imagination.”

***

 

 _II: Paris_

In Paris, his intense desire to work an inception had immediately come into direct conflict with his well-honed ‘stay away from this, it will blow up in your face’ instincts. Cobb wasn’t the same man he’d worked with before. His intensity and focus had segued into obsession that was careening rapidly into real psychological instability. Arthur, too, was changed.

Seeing Arthur again had been strange. He’d intentionally given him absolutely, resolutely, no thought on the flight over from Mombasa.

“Arthur! Good to see you again!” he’d exclaimed warmly, easily, stepping into the warehouse, casually behind Cobb.

“Eames.” Arthur had said shortly, by way of greeting, looking up briefly from his computer and nodding his head in simple confirmation. Well. That was OK. It wasn’t as if Eames had been planning to throw himself at Arthur’s feet, ( _nice shoes, though_ ) and beg forgiveness for having been an arsehole when they’d parted last. This was good. Neutral was good.

OK, maybe it was a bit annoying.

He watched Arthur over his notes and started to catalogue the changes. He still had the same lean, lithe frame of six years ago, which gave Eames the occasional disquieting flash of memory of pale skin and taut muscle. He’d lost the looseness of youth; the faint, residual air of gangly teenager that had still hung around him back then. His face was still smooth, skin sculpted over bone, his mouth still clean as a cat’s, a flash of pink tongue when he spoke. He looked tired. Of course he was older, but that didn’t entirely explain the dusty cast to his skin that spoke of intense fatigue, or the wiry tension of his body that spoke of bare survival. He was as well-presented as he’d been before – more so, if anything – but his eyes and brow were creased with lines of strain. A tiny nerve at the back of his hand at base of his thumb jerked spasmodically when he talked to Cobb.

Cobb was losing it, no question, guilt eating him like dry rot, and Arthur looked like a man who’d been holding himself, both of them, together by willpower alone for far too long. Ariadne, their new architect, was quick, gifted even, but Eames was damned glad he’d brought Yusuf in on the job to even up the quota of experienced _and_ fully-functional on this job.

He’d flirted with Ariadne and had been relieved to find that she was neither spooked nor remotely impressed.

“Please, Mr Eames, I’ve been living in Paris for two years now, where coming on to women is a national sport.”

“All right, love. Just didn’t want you to feel under-appreciated.”

“You could just stick to ‘nice scarf’ in future.”

“Okey dokey, but can I please keep calling you Sweet Cheeks? Because I do think it suits you and it’ll be one less pet name I’ll be tempted to call Arthur. So really, you’d be accepting it for the good of his fragile mental health.”

“Jeez, what is it with you two?” Ariadne had laughed.

“Just me, darling. Just me. Arthur, as you know, is always scrupulously professional,” and he mimicked the quirk of Arthur’s eyebrows and the twitch of his cuff when he was unimpressed by something, to make Ariadne laugh and smooth over what he felt might have been just a touch of bitterness in his tone.

It was ridiculous. Yes, Arthur was still as hot as he remembered him and as strangely compelling, requisitioning Eames’ concentration against his will and with apparently no conscious effort. He was also distant and completely uninterested in pursuing anything but the barest and most work-focussed of interactions with Eames. That was that. Eames wasn’t one to pine and fret over might-have-beens. You didn’t get to be the best forger in the business, wielding a preternatural control over other people’s psyches, without being able to keep your own shit in line. Eames gathered up all his private speculations about what made Arthur smile and what so exactly filled out his trousers, bundled it up and binned it.

He was going to maintain a completely professional and detached demeanour on this job – there was far too much extraneous baggage floating around as it was. Still, he sometimes couldn’t resist tipping Arthur’s chair, just to see him scowl. At least, he rationalised, it served the purpose of bringing Arthur back to the simple, earthly realm of how fucking irritating Eames. It just got a bit wearing, watching Arthur going around looking like some St Sebastian, who having been shot full of arrows, was steeling himself for the bit when he had to go and get himself clubbed to death.

It was when Arthur stopped even scowling and just got back in his chair, absently rubbing his banged elbow, and kept working with the sort of disassociated calm that led to chainsaw massacres in suburban neighbourhoods that Eames decided someone else really had to be in charge of this job. He nominated himself. He couldn’t fix what was broken between Cobb and Arthur, and God knows, Cobb’s broken was starting to set up a gravitational pull all of its own, but he could just bloody ignore them and get on with the nice little task of incepting Fischer.

*

“A little too much duty free champagne, eh?”

Jesus! What was wrong with people! It was a job. It was a challenging job, but there was no need to go into it, as if everyone’s life was on the line. OK, so maybe Cobb’s was, in a way, but still, game face, people, you couldn’t go into a job like this expecting to fail!

Eames heard the unmistakable report of gunfire.

“Eames!”

He thrust Fischer down into the foot well, out of harm’s way, and began to return fire out of the, now shattered, rear window.

“Are you OK, are you OK?!?”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m OK, Fischer’s OK. Unless he gets car sick.”

Eames sat back. He didn’t know where the fuck that had all come from. He did spare a thought though to enjoy the fact that Arthur clearly trusted him to watch his back when the shit hit the fan, even if most of the time he looked at him like he couldn’t tie his own shoelaces.

*  
“What do you mean, we won’t wake up? When we die in a dream, we wake up!”

Really, if he got out of this job alive and with his consciousness intact, he was going to fucking kill Cobb and that fucking traitor Yusuf! He was going to kill Arthur too – militarised to fuck! How could he have missed it?

If he’d known those concerned looks Arthur had been shooting Cobb had in fact signalled ‘I don’t know what the fuck you are up to any more and it’s distracting me from what I am supposed to be up to, too’ he might have decided to sit out this job when it was still an option.

*

“We’re giving him back his relationship with his father. Really, we should be charging Fischer more than Saito for this job!”

Eames kept the easy patter going in the back of the van as they bombed away from the warehouse. Ariadne looked a bit freaked out, and no wonder, faced with the unexpected levels of violence they were encountering and Saito bleeding to death beside her. He wanted to maintain the impression that this was still just a job. Yes, their lives were in fact on the line, fuck you very much Mr Cobb, but they were all experienced professionals, Ariadne aside, with thousands of dream hours between them. They needed to play this job straight down the line, with their usual flair, not with the bleak determination of a last stand.

The quips seemed to remind Arthur of this and yank him back from letting self-recriminations and other useless emotions distract him from doing what he needed to do. Mounting irritation with Eames was ‘a work thing’ and helped to get him back into his work head. Whatever it took. Eames was going to play this job, just like he had all the others, because he’d _survived_ all the others and if it ain’t broke ...

“Go to sleep, Mr Eames.”

Well, maybe he wouldn’t kill Arthur, if he could be persuaded to smile at him like that a little more often. It was sort of nice.

***

 _III: Los Angeles_

Cobb left the passport control desk and walked on through customs without looking back. Yusuf whooped quietly to himself and sketched a few celebratory dance moves, attracting far more attention than a young man of Arab extraction ought, when trying to pass through US immigration.

Ariadne was beaming, eyes shining, like she was watching her child head off to school on its own for the first time. Eames shot Arthur a wink, his euphoria over just how damn hard he had rocked that job overflowing. Arthur shook his head and dragged his hands over his face, letting out a strangled laugh.

Saito looked quietly pleased and only the slightest bit wild around the eyes, which, considering he had in the last ten hours died of a gunshot wound and lived seventy years in solitude in limbo surrounded by no one but the projections of his own imagination, was pretty fucking impressive.

They had all taken separate taxis, in case Fischer or his people had for any reason become suspicious, but all except Cobb ended up in a private suite at one of the hotels Saito owned in LA. It wasn’t the usual thing, to get together like this after a job, but this had ended up being more than just a job for all of them and it had felt right to gather together at the end. Saito’s staff had laid out a celebratory banquette

“Excellent!” said Saito. “I, for one, am in need of a strong drink,” and he motioned to everyone to take seats around the table.

“Thank you, Mr Saito,” said Arthur. “But I am going to need to leave. I need to monitor Fischer’s communications to ensure there is no fall-out from the job.”

This announcement was met with a chorus of disapproval from everyone present.

“Arthur. My people are monitoring the situation closely. I can assure you they will let us know, should there be indications for concern at any point.”

“Sit down, Arthur!” Eames had called. “I really want to hear how you managed to kick us all in zero G. Besides, if you leave, I’ll get into a bad mood and then I’ll remember why I have to kill Yusuf here.”

Yusuf had cringed a bit and started to mumble a repeat of his explanation and excuses about the ‘special’ dope he’d given all of them. But Eames had continued. “And, why I particularly need to hunt down and kill Cobb, even as he rests in the bosom of his family. And that would be a shame, after you’ve worked so hard to get him back there.”

“Please, Arthur,” Ariadne had said and Arthur had relented, sliding into a seat, as if his legs were finally giving out from under him.

Saito had stood again then and raised his glass. “Gentlemen, madam,” and he nodded formally at Ariadne, “it has been an honour to work with you.”

They had all stood then and Eames had stretched his glass towards Saito saying, “it has been an honour to work with you, sir!” And they all drank.

Then Arthur had called on them to raise their glasses in congratulations to Ariadne on the successful completion of her first job and they had done so. Then Yusuf had stood and formally begged everyone’s apology for colluding in drugging them all and they had drunk in acceptance of his apology.

After that, the orderliness of the drinking disintegrated somewhat. Yusuf had filled them in on what had happened on the first level.

“What was going on up there? Shit, it felt like the hotel rolled over,” Arthur asked.

“It did, it did!” Yusuf cried, “I rolled the van down a gravel slope and kept driving. It was very exciting!”

“That’s pretty hardcore for a chemist in a cardigan!” Eames had smiled at Yusuf’s enthusiastic grin.

“Yes! And I am never, never doing it again,” said Yusuf, still grinning.

Arthur had explained about the early kick catching him too far from the hotel room and the work-around he had come up with. Eames and Saito had gone through what had occurred on the third level and they had all agreed they were all fucking awesome and drunk some more.

Then Ariadne had told them about what had happened to her and Cobb in limbo, how she had shot Mal and seen Cobb take his final leave of her. Saito wouldn’t talk about his time in limbo. Then everyone felt a bit sober and had to drink some more.

“I’m … think I need to lie down now,” mumbled Ariadne sleepily, her eyes opaque with alcohol.

“I will get someone to show you to your room,” said Saito rising. “I think I also will retire now. Gentlemen,” and he had nodded to them and left.

“I think I’ll be heading off too,” said Yusuf.

“That’s right, fuck off! I still haven’t really forgiven you!” Eames had retorted and Yusuf had smiled a small, shame-faced smile at them and left.

“Brilliant! I’m going to be yanking his chain over this for months,” Eames had said smugly. “So, Arthur,” and Eames had changed tone, his voice warm and low. “Smashing job, eh?”

Arthur had given a small nod and half-smile of satisfaction and settled back in his chair.

“So, Arthur,” Eames had repeated, kicking Arthur’s foot gently, stretching languidly, self-satisfaction oozing from every pore. “I rather think you owe me one, for saving that whole damn job through my epic brilliance, forethought and improvisational flair,” and he’d smiled suggestively at Arthur. To be strictly accurate, he’d been smiling suggestively at Arthur all evening, but now he turned it up another couple of notches.

“I am not sleeping with you out of gratitude, Eames, whatever you might think,” Arthur had replied, tipping his head back against the cushions of his chair.

“What about out of unrestrained lust?” Eames had asked. Arthur had snorted in a wholly undignified fashion and rolled his head round to look at Eames.

“I dunno. It didn’t turn out too well for me last time.”

“What if I promise faithfully not to hold you at gunpoint and steal all your money afterwards?” Eames asked. Arthur looked unconvinced.

“What if,” and Eames stood up and moved behind Arthur’s chair massaging his neck and breathing lightly into his ear. “What if I let you hold me at gunpoint and take all my money, to even things up?”

“We’ll see, Mr Eames,” said Arthur stretching back under Eames’ hands

***

 _IV: Manila_

“Hah!” Eames giggled maniacally to himself as he leapt over the dugout wall and crouched by Arthur’s side as an explosion rocked overhead.

“This is _not_ what was supposed to happen, and there is no need for you to look so obscenely cheerful about it,” snapped Arthur, shortly.

“Oh you! I saw you take down two of ‘em with one bullet. You know you’re having a good time!” Eames returned, grinning broadly, through the dried dirt coating his face.

“I am not ...” huffed Arthur, vaulting out of the dugout with Eames half a beat behind him and running crouched across no man’s land, “having a good time.” Arthur took out two more projections, while Eames set up the mount for the machine gun. “I infinitely prefer it when jobs run cleanly and according to plan.”

“Bollocks!” scoffed Eames, letting rip with the machine gun.

Arthur maintained short range cover while Eames loaded another round. “Are you going to let me fuck you after this job?” Eames asked.

“No.”

They both crouched down at a violent volley of return fire. Arthur checked the ammo in his pistols and swung the assault rifle off his back.

“What if I hold Spinozer at gunpoint, steal all his money and give it to you as a present?” asked Eames, still grinning like a madman.

“Holding people at gunpoint and robbing them is not going to become ‘our thing’ Eames,” replied Arthur stonily. After a moment, though, his face cracked and he shot Eames a quick grin. “All right, maybe. That fucker deserves whatever you dish out to him after landing us in this shit!”

“You love it, darling!” shouted Eames. Whatever Arthur replied was lost beneath the sharp report of machine gun fire.

***

 _V: Miami_

“I could stay, you know,” Eames murmured into the warm, sweat-slicked skin of Arthur’s neck.

“Mmm?” Arthur murmured, shifting to disentangle his leg from the sheets.

“Mmm, indeed. You are just so truly delicious, I could even bring myself to live somewhere as wretchedly crass as Miami for a while. At least it’s warm and it would be worth it to be able to avail myself of this,” and he slid his hand up Arthur’s flank, “without some hideous transcontinental flight.”

Arthur snorted. “Eames, are you inviting yourself to move in with me?”

“Well, yes.” Eames smiled, mouthing light open-mouthed kissed up Arthur’s neck to the base of his hairline. “It isn’t as though either of us actually spend much time in any one place. It would be easier.” Eames had never been very good at going on dates.

Arthur snorted again, even more freely. “You’re out of your fucking mind.”

Eames made a small noise of protest against Arthur’s skin.

“You are out of your fucking mind,” Arthur repeated, with more emphasis than was flattering.

“You don’t want me to stay?” Eames, affronted, raised himself up on his arms and peered down at Arthur, frowning.

“Come on, Eames. Everyone knows you fuck around indiscriminately, whether you are living with someone or not.”

“I am,” said Eames with some dignity, “both discriminating and discreet.”

“Quite possibly,” said Arthur, still smiling, his eyes lazy and hooded. “But I fail to see what is in it for me; the dubious distinction of being the fuck you are currently living with?”

“You’re being unfair!”

“Eames,” Arthur breathed, tilting his head back against the headboard and tugging gently at the short hairs at the back of Eames’ neck. “I know you believe you are utterly devoted to whoever you are with, except for the hour, day or week you are _actually_ fucking someone else. It’s quite endearing, in a way, how fucked up your sense of devotion is. Point is,” and Arthur’s eyes sharpened with a focus and an intensity Eames always consistently failed to read, “I’m not going there. Now, come here.”

Eames remained propped up on his arms, elbows locked, frowning.

Arthur smiled his small, knowing smile. “Come on. You going to tell me you are going to leave me here like this, all what … heartbroken and spurned? Gonna fly back to Mombasa without kissing me goodbye.”

Eames had smiled his widest, most winningly ‘you got me there!’ smile, and buried his face in Arthur’s stomach. And if he was a little, well, not heartbroken but perhaps peeved, no one ever needed to know about it.

***

 

 _VI: Seattle_

“And this is Tadeo, he’ll be our chemist.” Arthur finished his team introductions and turned towards the wall of photographs and notes to continue the briefing.

Eames noted the small twitch of a warm smile Arthur shot across to the long-limbed, blond Italian man who had just nodded his greeting to everyone. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to ensure that Eames continued to keep an eye on them together. Though ninety eight per cent of his attention was focussed on assimilating the details of Stenberg, Stenberg’s business partner and the finer points of the Stenberg holdings company, it didn’t mean he couldn’t see the way the two of them revolved around one another.

It wasn’t a big deal. It wasn’t as if he and Arthur had more than a casual thing, fucking to celebrate jobs well done and sometimes, if one or other of them happened to be passing through, between jobs. And he had Jade waiting for him in LA when this job was done anyway.

*

“Really?” said Ariadne, her eyes wide with incredulity as they collected coffees together twenty four hours later from the café on the corner. “I haven’t noticed anything.”

“Arthur’s hardly a ‘pass me the file, snookey ookums’ sort of guy, is he?” replied Eames. “The fact that he is even shooting him the odd smile is the Arthur equivalent of being head over heels and wanting all the world to know. Grotesquely romantic, really. I wouldn’t really be surprised if Arthur whisked him over the boarder to Canada before the job is through. You should line up a frock, in case he asks you to witness.”

Ariadne had laughed, the sharp bark of a laugh she had, and elbowed him in the stomach. “Well, he is pretty, you know, fucking gorgeous. You sure he and Arthur … ?”

“Just watch them.”

 _OMG u r so right!_ Ariadne texted. Eames clicked his phone back off and tried to feel more self-satisfied.

***

 _VII: São Paulo_

“And you all know Tadeo, he’s going to be chemist on this job.”

Later that afternoon, Eames watched the pair of them as they stood discussing the architect’s model. It was one of the things he was best at, watching. Tadeo’s soft smile and the way it made the lines around Arthur’s eyes soften slightly in response. From the corner of his eye he watched the two figures across the office space, silhouetted by the picture windows. He watched Tadeo slide a hand around Arthur’s waist and the small motion that indicated Arthur was talking and Tadeo backing away, hands raised in mock submission, laughing, stepping lightly back and turning away as fluid as if he was dancing. Light and dark, the pair of them looked like leaping flames, whittled away by the bright light streaming in the window.

*

“Oh God, I’m sorry Eames, this job is just really getting me down. I know, I know, I shouldn’t have taken another job with Whittaker, but Friedrichson gets some really good jobs, you know?” Ariadne was calling from her hotel in Wisconsin. Eames was eating peanuts from his mini bar at arse o’clock in São Paulo.

“That’s all right, sweet cheeks, but you really shouldn’t you know. The man’s a fuckwit. I keep telling you.”

“I know. I _know_. Seriously. And he has all the spatial awareness of fruit fly. If I have to talk him through the route one more time, I swear!”

“Yeah, well at least you’re working with Perez. He’ll look after you and you aren’t injecting fucking Mogadon into your system every time you go under. Tadeo is to chemistry what you are to cooking, darling.” It wasn’t actually true. Just sort of helped to say so to Ariadne. Tadeo was a good chemist, light touch, as he was with everything else. Arthur wouldn’t work with him if he wasn’t, no matter what else was going on. At least, Eames really wanted to believe that.

“Fuck!” Ariadne laughed. “Do you think if I was as good looking as he is, people would forgive my cooking too?”

“Darling, I would eat your raw salmon pasta special any day over taking Tadeo’s half-arsed concoctions. I am only keeping my sanity by flirting outrageously with him. It’s currently neck and neck between dying of cardiac arrest at the hands of the gorgeous Tadeo’s pharmaceutical inadequacy or having my throat cut by Arthur. Getting Tadeo to actually suck me off is running a very poor third in the stakes right now.”

“You don’t think he’d actually do it, do you?”

“What, Arthur cut my throat or Tadeo suck me off?”

“No, I know Arthur would cut your throat. I mean, Tadeo. He wouldn’t, would he? He and Arthur are good aren’t they?” Ariadne sounded concerned now.

“‘Spect so.” Eames didn’t want to talk about this any more. “Listen darling, I’ve got to be at the law courts bright and early, so I’d better buzz. You tell Perez to watch Whittaker, right?”

“Sure. Night Eames.”

“Night, sweetheart.”

*  
He knew he didn’t fucking like Tadeo, but that was all right, you didn’t have to like everyone you worked with. Question was, did he just not fucking like him, or was there something … something off? Tadeo must be damned good, Eames knew, if he wasn’t kosher. He was genuinely sweet. Not just things like bringing Arthur the coffee he liked or holding out the pen Arthur needed, intuitively, without looking up from the litmus paper developing in front of him. The way his face remained still, but a blush crept up his neck when Arthur looked at him a moment too long. Even his movements, his gait and gestures, took on a more liquid quality when Arthur was nearby, as if his whole body was suffused with the memory of Arthur’s touch.

Ariadne had liked him. Said Eames was just being an asshole. Yusuf had just given him an enigmatic little half smile and said “I can see why you don’t like him” in a way that sounded a bit like it was an observation about Eames rather than about Tadeo. Eames had rounded on him and demanded to know just what Yusuf was implying belligerently enough for Yusuf to back off and say no more.

It was definitely time to start paying closer attention. He didn’t want Arthur getting too pissy with him, so he set up a smokescreen, a concerted ‘have you two considered a threesome?’-campaign, that had Tadeo laughing and Arthur rolling his eyes and barking instructions to Eames to fuck off and concentrate on his work.

Nothing. There was nothing on Tadeo anywhere. Everyone liked the fucker. His background was clean as a whistle. Still, there must be something. Eames was just beginning to lose faith in his private vendetta and wonder whether Ariadne was perhaps right, when Tadeo followed him into the kitchen one afternoon as they were working alone together at the lock-up.

Tadeo was certainly beautiful, with the lightly tanned skin, blond hair and smokey blue eyes of a Northern Italian.

“You don’t like me very much, do you?” he’d said, angling his hips up against the counter and tilting his head to one side. The sun slanting in the window lit up his curls like a halo. Eames knew he was doing this intentionally. He would have done the same thing in his position. Eames brought his hands up to rest on the windowsill behind him so that his t-shirt was stretched tight across his broad chest. Two could play at that game.

“I don’t know what you mean, Tadeo?” he said, clipped and smiling, but not warm.

“No, you don’t like me very much.”

“Maybe,” said Eames. “Maybe I just like to look out for my friends.”

Tadeo had laughed, sharp and mirthless. “Is that what you think you’re doing?” His voice had slipped from its customary light tones to something with a low, mocking edge.

“I’m just looking out for Arthur.” Eames kept his voice even with an effort. He was getting something here, even if he didn’t know what it was.

Tadeo slipped along the counter. He was taller than Eames by a good five inches. He had twisted around Eames, avoiding the arm Eames brought up to ward him off. Smoothing Eames’ hair he had laughed softly but disdainfully in his face. “You are pathetic. Everyone thinks so.” He settled back against the counter, still too close to Eames and his hips cocked, and gave Eames a sultry stare from beneath his lashes.

 _Game on_ , thought Eames. Tadeo was trying to play him. And he _was_ good. Lithe like quicksilver and he knew how to hit a nerve.

 _Everyone thinks so_ and Eames couldn’t help his thoughts from skidding back to Yusuf, reading pity in his smile now. Rather than upsetting him though, the move had sharpened his mind. Because he _knew_ that trick. He knew how to turn people’s insecurities, their feelings, their desire against themselves. Tadeo was good, but no one was quite as good as he was.

“So, darling,” he had purred, leaning back against the counter, giving Tadeo a full eyeful of the breadth of his shoulders, “what am I supposed to do now? Leap on you and what … hit you or fuck you or something?” Tadeo had just smiled slyly up at him.

“I suppose it doesn’t really matter,” Eames had continued. “Either way, you go running to Arthur and I’m fucked. Off the team, off the circuit. Maybe even out of commission entirely for a while, depending on how righteously pissed off Arthur is with me.”

Tadeo had licked his pink tongue around his teeth and looked indecently triumphant.

“You little shit,” he had enunciated smooth and low. “You’re playing him and you think you can play me. Well, you are fucking mistaken.”

Tadeo smirked at this, and for a minute it was all he could do not to pound that face to a messy pulp. But that would do no good. He’d been watching Arthur and Tadeo had him, had him in the palm of his shitty little hand. It was worth the risk for Tadeo to take on Eames. In the best case scenario he would neutralise the threat Eames posed, perhaps addling him up with misplaced lust or guilt at hitting on Arthur’s lover. He would defuse any trouble that Eames could cause him, if he could prove categorically that Eames was no friend of Arthur’s. And there really was nothing Eames could do or say. He would simply come across as the impotent, jealous and snubbed ex-lover. He knew that and Tadeo knew that.

For a moment, Eames contemplated just doing it anyway. Breaking Tadeo’s pretty face, just for his own satisfaction, though it would probably destroy his relationship with Arthur. But he didn’t. It took an unexpected amount of self control not to. He reminded himself it wouldn’t achieve anything and that he’d be throwing away what little influence he had over Arthur. What clinched it however was that Tadeo was trying to play him and if he went with it, Tadeo would have won. Instead Eames took a tight hold on the front of Tadeo’s shirt and got up in his face.

“There is no way you are going to come out of this in one piece,” Eames breathed lightly and menacingly into Tadeo’s face. “Arthur is going to clock your shit at some point. Soon. And I’ll be there. I’ll be there and I’ll have a special pair of latex gloves and a roll of rubber sheeting put by especially for the ragged remains of your worthless carcass Arthur is going to leave behind when he realises what you are.”

Tadeo had just smiled back, challenging, because he could read Eames’ rationale as well as Eames could and he knew Eames had nothing really to touch him with.

Eames bared his teeth in a nasty smile. Tadeo was good, but he was going to fuck up at some point. Well, he had to, didn’t he?

*  
Eames had completed the São Paulo job. Forged the mark’s mother, re-writing history, convincing him that she’d always wanted him to take his brother’s shares and consolidate the company. That he’d always been her best baby. Eames had ignored Arthur and Tadeo as much as he could. Particularly the way his hand would rest lightly but possessively on Tadeo’s shoulder and the smug, sly looks Tadeo shot him.

“It seems that I, well, I haven’t really taken to Tadeo,” he’d said with a rueful smile. “Probably better if you don’t ask me to work on jobs with him, yeah?” And Arthur had nodded and then simply not contacted him again.

Shit. Well, shit!

“He’s still with him.” Ariadne had told him.

“Well of course he fucking is!” Eames had groused, “Why wouldn’t he be?”

***

 

 _VIII: Mumbai_

“Hello Eames. It’s Arthur.”

“Arthur! It’s been a while how are you?” Eames kept his voice neutral but open, striving to keep warmth and other unwelcome emotions from colouring it at all.

“Good. I’ve got a job.”

“Oh?”

“Tadeo’s working on a long job with Rachid. Martinez is going to be our chemist.”

“Oh, all right, tell me more.”

*  
“What’s he doing here?”

Arthur looked up, unapologetically from his notes. “Martinez is in hospital. Hit by a car. I’ve negotiated with Rachid, Tadeo is with us for just two days. It’s this or put the job back six months. Deal with it, Mr Eames.”

“Fine,” said Eames, shortly. He glanced over to where Tadeo was unpacking some vials, the early morning sun turning his hair and skin golden.

“Good afternoon, Eames,” said Tadeo, smoothly. And Eames immediately regretted not just turning around and walking out of the door.

“Let me fill you in,” said Arthur. “Mr Amerjee will be routing one hundred and twenty three million dollars of Mr Khan’s money through a series of different accounts until it is finally merged into a larger dark pool trading fund administered by a friend of Mr Khan. Mrs Khan wants to track the money and therefore needs the knowledge of the route in Mr Amerjee’s possession.”

It was a nice job. Mumbai was lively and Eames didn’t mind the heat. It was good to work with Arthur again. With someone who knew what Eames needed to know and would get the right information to him, if it was available, without pointless explanations.

Maybe it wouldn’t be too bad.

*

He became aware of his pulse, sluggish and laboured. He became aware of the hard linoleum under his cheek and the bite of constriction around his wrists and ankles. His head pounded. His ankle holster was gone. Careful not to alter the rhythm of his breathing, he cracked an eye. Darkness. He listened. There was someone else there, breathing in the dark.

“You’re awake. Are you hurt?” Arthur. It was Arthur’s voice, low and controlled.

“No. No damage, just bound. And drugged,” Eames said, keeping his tone low, too, his voice slurred and his tongue leaden and dry. He rolled over and sat up clumsily. He flexed his fingers. Felt around behind him. The smooth surface of some sort of unit. He wriggled. Heavy duty cable-ties. Absolutely no give in them at all.

“You all right?” he asked back.

“Yes, same state as you.” Arthur murmured and began to shuffle awkwardly across the floor towards him. “Get hold of my sleeve.” They manoeuvred around until, back to back, Eames was able to find Arthur’s hand with his. “Pull off the third cuff button. Can you feel it? There should be a place now where the lining has given. Feel in there. There’s a razor blade in the corner of the cuff.”

Eames fiddled out the little paper packet and slid his thumbnail under the flap. He had to move slowly. His hands tingled from restricted circulation as he tried not to cut himself or Arthur and not to drop the blade.

“Put your palms against the floor if you can,” he directed. Arthur moved and Eames started to snick away at the tie around his wrists. When the tie came off, Arthur took the blade from him and returned the favour. Once his legs were free Eames stood, slowly, and made his way, still somewhat woozy, to the crack of light that indicated the presence of a door. Pressing his face to the hinge, he spied through the crack.

“We’re still in the house. Someone’s put us in the laundry room,” he told Arthur. He felt around and found a light switch. Flipping it, he turned to see Arthur running the razor blade around the seam of his jacket collar and removing a nylon garrotte.

“Enchanting, Arthur. I don’t suppose you’ve got plastic explosives in your shoes?”

“No. I tried that, but I hate wearing stacked heels. Makes me feel like an Italian pimp, I decided it wasn’t worth it. How functional are you?”

“About eighty per cent. Dehydrated.” Eames went over to the sink and scooped handfuls of water into his mouth. “You good?”

“Yes. Fast metabolism. Can you get the door open, without making too much noise? Whoever attacked us, they may still be in the house and have Ariadne and Tadeo.”

Eames went over to the door and examined the lock. “Shouldn’t be a problem. It’s just a domestic lock.”

As he worked, Eames thought. He didn’t remember anything beyond their arrival at the mark’s house. How had they been drugged? He routinely did not eat or drink in the immediate run up to a job, as the actions of the Somnacin were more finely tuned on an empty system. There was none of the tingling and sensitivity around his nose and mouth he’d associate with the application of inhalational anaesthetics. Anyway, the chances of someone being able to get the jump on both Arthur and himself at the same time were vanishingly small, which also excluded jabbing them with injectors. Once they were hooked to the PASIV, of course, all bets were off. It would be the easiest thing in the world to adulterate their PASIV lines, if their chemist was incapacitated or … co-operative. One hundred and twenty three million dollars was a fair bit of money.

They’d taken his lockpicks, of course, but with a small metal element prized off the back of the washing machine it only took a minute or two to unscrew the mount around the lock and take it apart.

They crept along the ground floor corridor. The house appeared to be as deserted as it had been when they’d arrived that morning for their job. They mounted the stairs to the first floor, and still nothing. It was only on moving towards the rear drawing room, where they had intended to set up the PASIV, that either of them had any sense the building was occupied at all.

Arthur, who was lightest on his feet, motioned to Eames, who stepped aside into the doorway of an anteroom as Arthur stole up to the drawing room door, flattened himself against the wall, then shot his head out quickly to glance into the room and back. He’d signed back to Eames, _make a noise._

Eames had taken a step into the hall, heavier than previously and jarred lightly against a console table there. The small noise seemed to elicit movement from within the drawing room. A figure appeared in the doorway, gun raised, but before he could fire, Arthur had slipped the garrotte around his neck. Eames stayed out of the line of fire until he heard the pistol drop to the floor, then he’d come over quickly, scooped it up and stepped over Arthur and the twitching form of the man Arthur was finishing off.

The drawing room was illuminated by the afternoon sun, filtering in through the shutters. Eames quickly established there were no further threats in the room, just the four sleeping figures hooked up to the PASIV. It was eerily similar to what they had themselves planned. Mr Amerjee lay asleep on the chaise longue. Ariadne slouched in a nearby armchair. But instead of Arthur and himself, he saw Tadeo and, was that Mellor? Yes, it was Mellor, a mediocre forger of dubious reputation.

Before doing anything else, Eames frisked first Mellor, then Tadeo and then, just to be thorough, Mr Amerjee and Ariadne for weapons. He recovered both his Browning and Arthur’s Glock along with the pieces Tadeo and Mellor had been carrying, as well as vehicle keys from Mellor’s pocket.

Arthur had entered the room now, and Eames returned his gun to him. Arthur was staring in fixed concentration at the sleeping figures before him. Ariadne’s face was tear stained and the left side of her face was red and starting to swell, indicating she’d been struck. There were no marks on Tadeo.

Eames showed Arthur the other weapons he’d recovered and indicated where they’d come from. Arthur’s face remained blank and impassive, though the blood was fast draining from it, leaving his lips thin and white as bone.

Having waited, for well over a year, for this to happen, Eames suddenly, viscerally, found himself hoping he was leaping to unfounded conclusions. Arthur’s eyes flickered between the sleeping figures, calculating.

“I need to go under, join the dream and find out what is going on,” Arthur said flatly, staring at Tadeo. He crossed quickly to the PASIV. “There are seven minutes to go. I’ll hook up. Reset to give the dream twelve minutes. If it proves feasible I’ll eject Ariadne from the dream sooner than that. I’ll see what information I can recover. Either way, I’ll need a further sedative in Amerjee, to keep him out till we’re clear. Give me the kick when there is thirty seconds left on the clock.” As he spoke Arthur drew an IV line from the PASIV and took a seat.

Eames nodded to him taking Arthur’s place at the PASIV. He kept his features set in an alert neutral expression; the last thing Arthur needed now was pity. Arthur slid neatly asleep, as he always did and Eames stood guard in case any of the dreamers wakened early.

While he waited he thought. They’d need to clear, not just themselves, but the body of the chap on the landing and ... any further bodies. Mellor was dead for one thing. You don’t jump other people’s jobs like this. It was also always expedient to be known as someone who didn’t take kindly to being messed about. Besides, Mellor had always been a waste of space. It would be no loss to anyone. Eames crossed the long room to the windows at the far end overlooking the drive. Peering through the shutters, he saw a shiny black utility vehicle sitting on the forecourt.

 _Stealth_. Mellor deserved to die. What a tool.

He heard a movement back across the room and crossing quickly he saw Ariadne blinking awake. He crouched next to her.

“Hello darling, you all right?”

“Eames! Oh shit, Eames!” Ariadne had clutched at his shirt, her eyes shooting round in fear.

“Shh, it’s all right, darling. We’ve got it covered. You’re all right.” Ariadne buried her face in Eames’ shoulder briefly.

“They said they would burn you,” she said, choked. “They showed you to me, unconscious and tied up. They said they had petrol cans in the car. They said they would burn both of you, if I didn’t run the job.”

“Shh, love. It’s all right,” Eames repeated stroking her hair. “Look, I need to keep this thing going. You’re going to have to buck up for a bit, darling.”

“Yeah, OK, I’m all right,” said Ariadne straightening and sweeping her damp hair off her forehead.

“OK. I’m going to give you this,” he said, handing her the Mauser he’d taken from Mellor’s jacket. “There’s a dead chap on the landing. It’ll speed things along if I can get his body cleared into their jeep. You watch these two,” he signalled to Mellor and Tadeo then rose to check the PASIV. “They should all wake in six minutes. If I’m not back, tip Arthur when there is a minute to go. If either of the others wake before then, shoot them. OK?”

Ariadne took a steadying breath then nodded, clear-eyed.

“Good girl!” said Eames, giving her an encouraging nod and heading out of the room.

When he got the body downstairs to the jeep he popped the boot, only to find it full of petrol cans. Swearing under his breath, he carried the guy to the passenger door, rolled him off his shoulder and propped him up in the back seat.

He took the stairs back up to the drawing room two at a time and returned to find Arthur standing over Tadeo with his gun raised. Tadeo was pleading with Arthur in low urgent tones. Mellor was slumped in his chair, a gunshot wound to his temple. Ariadne, her face pale and pinched in sadness stood awkwardly in the middle of the room looking at Arthur and Tadeo.

“Their jeep is outside,” Eames said loudly to Arthur, cutting over Tadeo. “Boot’s full of petrol cans. I vote we drive it out to that building site on the intersection and burn it and the bodies. Probably something like what they had planned for us.”

Arthur, whose eyes hadn’t left Tadeo’s face, quirked his eyebrow interrogatively.

“Please, Arthur!” Tadeo’s low voice was almost a moan. “I was only doing this to clear my debts with Mizoza. I wouldn’t have let them hurt you. I know I ruined this job. I didn’t have a choice. Mizoza was going to kill me. I know I should have told you, but I didn’t want you doing anything, getting dragged in. I thought this would be best. Fuck up one job, but get Mizoza off my back for good. Then I would be out of it and there would never be any danger of any of it catching up with you. I would never have let anyone hurt you!”

“I’m going to take Mellor now,” said Eames, cutting again across Tadeo’s pleas. “Ari, take the keys to the car.” He put the keys in her hand as he passed her crossing to Mellor’s body. “Amerjee should be good for another twenty minutes. You take the PASIV, go and get the car and drive round to the café on the corner beyond the intersection. We’ll see you there.”

Ariadne was already winding the lines back into the PASIV and clicking it shut as Eames hefted Mellor’s body onto his shoulder and made for the door.

“Eames.”

Arthur’s voice was stifled, as if the word had been forced reluctantly through his lips. Eames turned and saw Arthur throw him one quick look, before returning to Tadeo. Eames saw the briefest flash, of the maelstrom of confusion, pain and anger in Arthur’s eyes.

 _He wants me to tell him what he should do._ Eames thought. _Oh Jesus! And that was just wrong._ Eames did not want this.

“We can let Tadeo go,” Eames said, not looking at Tadeo, but at Arthur’s frozen profile. “He’ll never work in dream-sharing again. We’ve made our point, professionally, with Mellor and the other fellow. If he’s on the run from Mizoza, he’ll be well out of everyone’s way. Besides, Mizoza isn’t going to be happy with him about this job, and if he isn’t working, he won’t have a chance of paying him off, in which case he’ll end up dead anyway.

“If that story is even true,” Eames couldn’t help adding. “If it isn’t true, it’ll be a bit of a bitch hunting him down, but not impossible.” He shrugged and shook his head, “It’s your call.”

Ariadne picked up the PASIV and headed over to where Eames stood in the doorway. As Eames turned to leave Arthur spoke again, quietly.

“Ari, who hit you?”

Ariadne’s eyes darted to Eames, as if begging him to hide her, then she turned back to Arthur, swallowing.

“He did,” she said softly.

They heard the shot when they were halfway down the stairs.

*

It was sultry in the room, heavy with the scents of sex. Eames padded over to the French doors onto the balcony and slid them open. He stretched and enjoyed the cool breath of the last of the before-dawn, dew-laden air on his hot skin. He turned to drink in the sight of Arthur, sprawled across the sheets, the dawn light making his skin gleam.

Arthur had been frantic, fierce, out of control last night. It had been like fucking fire. And now he lay, like something perfect, cracked from the crucible, and Eames couldn’t tear his gaze away. He felt like he couldn’t move and couldn’t breathe. He was drunk on the vision of Arthur’s long limbs and the details of the raw redness where his ankles and wrists had been bound, the bruises from where he’d been manhandled by Eames.

Eames stood there, he didn’t know for how long, his half-formed plan of getting himself a cigarette forgotten, unable to act or to move back to the bed for fear of breaking this moment. It felt so perfect, euphoric, this moment of knowing, absolutely, what he _wanted_ most in the world and seeing it there in front of him.

Then Arthur opened his eyes, muzzy with sleep and then, eyes narrowing, jerking upright.

“Fuck it, Eames! Don’t watch me sleep!” He’d swung his legs round onto the floor, turning his back on Eames and, making to rise, had bent forwards, sinking his head into his hands. Eames, suddenly capable of movement again, stepped lightly around the bed, running his hands down Arthur’s shoulders and crouching in front of him.

“Arthur, darling,” he murmured, kissing along the temples and running his nose along Arthur’s hairline, smiling into his skin. Arthur didn’t respond, but remained sitting, motionless, his head in his hands. Until suddenly, swiftly he stood up, knocking Eames off balance so he landed on his bare arse on the floor. Arthur began to dress, quickly and economically in the clothes he had arrived in.

“You want to leave?” Eames asked, redundantly. “Because, I thought, maybe, you’d like to take some time off. Maybe come to Mombasa with me. My place there is nice and we could both use a break?”

“I’m going to Hong Kong. I have a job there starting in three days,” said Arthur briskly, knotting his tie. “And I need to find a new chemist.”

“I could come with you? I don’t mind. We could hang out there, before your job.”

“You have to be in Jo’burg in two days, with Swanson.”

“Fuck Swanson. I could cancel it.”

“I think you misunderstand the situation. Thanks for your help yesterday. I appreciate it, but we have never been and never will be ‘going anywhere’ together. This,” and Arthur gestured to the bed, “was because I really wanted someone else’s spunk in me as quickly as possible. Right up your street, I thought.” Arthur had gave him a tight little smile, shrugging on his jacket. “Don’t make things difficult for me, Eames, I’m really not in the mood for your song and dance routine today.”

Eames felt as if his internal organs were trying to burrow their way out through the base of his spine, like rats leaving a sinking ship. He was still sitting, absurdly, humiliatingly, naked on the floor. He’d opened his mouth to speak and found himself, for possibly the first time in his life, utterly and completely without words. He’d moistened his lips, smiled a crooked smile and nodded. He’d swallowed.

“No problem, Arthur.”

“Do you have exit money?” Arthur asked.

Eames nodded again. In fact it was going to be a bit of a bitch leaving town without using any plastic, but suddenly the thought of Arthur leaving a roll of notes on the dressing table before leaving was a bit too horrible to contemplate. He’d watched Arthur return the nod, snap up his briefcase and turn and leave the room.

 _Fuck_ , thought Eames and then he didn’t think anything at all for a while, just sat, staring at the closed door of the hotel room.

Because he wasn’t some useless sappy fuck and, anyway, did really need to get out of town, after a while he got up and stumbled into the shower. Setting the water to scalding, he scrubbed himself pink. Then he went onto the balcony and smoked that cigarette, and then another, and then he too left town.

***

 

 _IX: Mombasa_

Eames settled back against the wall, cradling his beer. It was good to be back. The Jo’burg job had been fine, challenging enough to hold his attention, thank God. He’d tried to call Arthur once, but the number had been taken out of service. Arthur changed his phone pretty often. He’d got a call from Jin about a rather nice little job in Shanghai that he’d headed straight over to after Jo’burg and that had taken up right up to the Seoul job, so he hadn’t ended up getting back to Mombasa for over two months.

He hadn’t heard from Arthur either. He’d called a few people. Neither Ari nor Yusuf had heard anything. Spinner said he heard he was working over in Jeddah.

The tiles at his back were still warm with the soaked-in sun of the day. He loved this time of day, when the furore of daily life in Mombasa was temporarily calmed, as if the noise of the city, of vehicles and car horns, was temporarily hushed by the pall of dusk thrown over it. The sinking sun hit the haze of dust hanging over the city, creating the effect of a North Sea fog across the skyline.

He’d always liked company. Always felt most comfortable in a noisy room, a crush of people, but more and more he was coming to appreciate these relatively rare evenings at home. Home. Well, it had been nearly eight years since he’d bought the building, though he’d spent only a fraction of that time actually living there. Mrs Oduya, who lived in the apartment below with her family, took care of the place while he was away.

He tipped his head back against the warm tiles behind him, watching the blue of the sky darken into night. He’d wanted to bring Arthur here. Had wanted to show him this place of his: the large white-walled rooms, sparsely furnished with a few pieces of heavy, dark wood furniture and lamps made of recycled metal; his dusty roof terrace, with its chipped tiles and view over the city. He didn’t have that many belongings to show for all the money he’d earned and places he’d visited. He collected people, more than things, and wasn’t particularly good at looking after either once he’d got them.

He did have a few pieces of art framed on the walls. They were drawings. He liked drawings: that private insight into the artist’s mind; the process of invention, creation, study, behind the effortless performance of a finished canvas. He had a chalk drawing by Boucher, a study for Mercury; a young man’s naked torso twisted away from the viewer as he gestured with an urgent message from the Gods. In the corner of the sheet, a detailed study of the young man’s face, the likeness of some unknown youth persuaded to sit for this pose and not a God at all. He would have liked to show it to Arthur.

Oh well, Arthur would turn up again at some point. Probably. He was the sort of person who’d want to lick his wounds in private, and Eames, who he must know had seen right through to the raw, lost, heart of that moment, he would want to see least of all.

Eames understood because he was the same. Being the best was often accompanied by a pretty poor track record when it came to dealing with one’s own errors of judgement. Arthur hated losing; _hated_ making mistakes. He liked to be on top of things, impervious to the emotional upheavals of the mere humans around him, and Eames would stick like a splinter in his eye reminding him that that state was ultimately unattainable. He would come around eventually and then, well, hopefully they’d all get back to somewhere like where they’d started.

Eames comforted himself with the thought that at least Arthur would be so unwilling to go over painful ground that he wouldn’t dwell on the tenderness of Eames’ touch or try to read the series of glaring tells Eames hadn’t thought to hide from him, that last morning in Mumbai.

It was just as well. He’d been carried away, he told himself. Piss poor timing too, all things considered, less than twenty-four hours since the man had had to shoot his lover in the head! Eames sucked on the neck of his beer. No, when Arthur resurfaced, they’d go back to how they were before. Working together, fucking occasionally. It would be good.

It turned out it was another six weeks before Arthur eventually called.

***

 

 _X: Washington_

“Eames.” Arthur’s greeting was clipped as usual.

“Arthur,” said Eames jovially. “What can I do you for?”

“I am going to need you in Washington next week.”

“Can’t, I’m afraid. I’ve already got a job on with Spinner.”

“I know. I’ve spoken to Spinner. They are going to push back to the twenty first. This is a special job. Saito wants to come out with us. He is insisting on the old team.” Eames strained to see if he could hear resentment in Arthur’s neutral voice. Was he really that reluctant to work with Eames?

“Saito has put up the cash. He’s bought Yusuf out of the Finisterre job as well.”

“It would appear that I really have no choice then.”

“No. You really have no choice.” Arthur confirmed.

“All right, send me the details. I’ll see you next week.”

“Thank you, Mr Eames,” and Arthur had cut the call.

*

They all assembled in Washington and it was, Eames was a little surprised to find, really good to see everyone again. Arthur, though he was largely successful in concealing it, was still miserable. Eames had studied enough of the stuff in his time to see the marks of grief Arthur tried to hide.

Worse than the grief, in Eames’ opinion, because he knew that was a phase people moved through, was the apparent knock to Arthur’s confidence. It was subtle, because Arthur wouldn’t let a thing like that just hang out, but there were infinitesimal pauses and points when his eyes shot left in momentary panic that told Eames that Arthur had developed a bit of a tic when it came to trusting his own judgement. It was so very wrong and it made Eames feel sick with anger whenever he noticed.

Everyone else was treating Arthur with just an extra touch of solicitude and warmth that Eames quickly decided wasn’t actually helping.

“Christ, Arthur,” he ended up saying on the second day, “it’s not like no one else ever got suckered by a pretty face and a pert bum! You heard the story about me and Leanne, right?” Ariadne was staring at him intently as if trying to communicate telepathically that he was being a monstrously insensitive prick. She didn’t understand.

“Come on, you must have heard about what happened with me and Leanne?” He looked to Arthur for corroboration, forcing him to engage with the story. Arthur grimaced wryly and nodded his head. “She was a real stunner! I mean, seriously, knock-out. I picked her up in a casino in Cannes.”

Arthur quirked an eyebrow.

“All right,” Eames conceded, “she picked me up. I’d just finished a job, was splashing the cash around. Must have seemed like a good proposition. Anyway, I lived with her for near on five months. That was a real roller coaster ride. She had me running every which way trying to scrape together the cash to keep her and after five months she took off, totally cleaning me out. I mean everything. Every bank account. Four year’s work, practically. Aliases blown out of the water everywhere, just for good measure. She took my car. She took the wallet she’d given me, _as a gift_! She left me with literally nothing but debts and the clothes I stood up in. Want to know what the worst thing is? If she showed up here again today, I’d probably take her home with me!” Eames threw his hands up at his own folly. The last part wasn’t true, but he was never one to let the truth ruin a good narrative sweep.

“At least Arthur doesn’t have that problem, eh, Arthur?”

Ariadne stared at him, her mouth hanging open as if she couldn’t believe he had just said that, but Arthur had laughed, choked as if the sound had been forced from him involuntarily, but he had laughed, his mouth twitching in a quick smile. And that was the point, because Eames couldn’t help at all with Arthur’s grief, his anger or his sense of betrayal, but he could help with his soul-eating sense of having made a fool of himself. There were always bigger fools around. Especially where Arthur was concerned.

What Eames hadn’t bargained on was how _he_ would feel, working with Arthur again. He had decided to take things easy between Arthur and him and keep things professional, neutral. He tried to restrict his interactions with Arthur, more to less, to matters pertaining to the job. Friendly, but professional, which didn’t explain the strange looks everyone kept giving him.

But it had been going pretty well. Arthur seemed to be finding his rhythm at least, in the job. Eames tried to keep focussed on the positive. He found it prudent to keep himself at a bit of a distance, because seeing Arthur look occasionally mute and miserable brought on almost uncontrollable urges to either scream at him in rage demanding the old Arthur back or to scoop him up, take him to his hotel room, wrap him in a duvet and feed him ice cream until he was better. Neither course of action, Eames decided, would be appreciated or constructive in relation to the job.

By day four he was maybe feeling a little strained. Ariadne, who had been shooting him concerned glances all day, grabbed his hand and dragged him away from his desk.

“Come on, Eames. What’s the matter with you? Yusuf is testing new compounds. Come and tip Arthur. You know that always cheers you up!”

She dragged him around the screen and gestured towards Arthur, sleeping uncomfortably in an aluminium armchair. Arthur’s mouth was slack in sleep, but there was still a little crease of a frown in his brow. His hands were curled softly in his lap. The late afternoon light lit up the planes of his cheek and temple. He was ...

Eames gazed at him for just a moment and then extricated his hand from Ariadne’s. “No thank you, love. I don’t feel like it today.” He smiled what was probably a fairly grotesque approximation of a smile and made his way as quickly as he could to the bathroom.

He rested his forehead against the cool mirror and tried to pull himself together. It shouldn’t be as hard as this. Brazen was his middle name. Well, one of his middle names. One of the nicer ones. He’d sat through a wedding breakfast, having slept with the bride, the groom and the mother of the bride all within the preceding forty eight hours, and not broken a sweat.

“OK Eames,” Ariadne banged in to the bathroom. “You are going to tell me. What is the matter with you?”

“Ariadne! This is the _men’s_ bathroom.”

Ariadne put her hands on her hips and glared up at him.

“What is going on with you? Why won’t you talk to Arthur?”

“I am talking to Arthur,” Eames reposted. “I talked to him for over an hour today about the information stream we are running from Phalanx.”

“I’m not talking about that! I’m talking about why you are being weird with him.”

Christ, he was getting the most awful headache. Eames pinched the back of his neck with both hands and exhaled deeply. “I’m doing the best that I can, Ariadne. Just get off my back,” He said tiredly.

Before she could interrogate him further Arthur banged into the bathroom, his face set in a scowl.

“What the fuck is going on? We have a big set up to run in under forty eight hours, and I seem to be the only one with his mind on the job! What the fuck is wrong with you, Eames? Actually, I don’t care what’s wrong with you, I just need you to get your shit together. Can you do that?”

“Absolutely, Arthur,” said Eames brightly.

“Good!” Arthur stormed back out.

Ariadne winced in sympathy, but it had been what Eames needed. They had always been good at giving one another, instinctively, what they needed to get the job done. The heat of Arthur’s anger had burned the crippling self-pity out of Eames and he knew what he had to do. He slipped into the role, effortlessly, and gave Ariadne a wink. This, after all, was a character he knew very well.

*  
Eames had done long forges before, but spending the rest of the week playing himself in front of the team, as well as the mark’s step-father, had been draining. It had worked though. At first Ariadne and Yusuf had been nonplussed at Eames’ apparent mood swing, but they had been so palpably relieved to have the old Eames back, smirking and sniping at Arthur, that they had relaxed into it quickly enough. Arthur had continued to give Eames only the bare minimum of his attention, rising to snap back at his barbs just often enough to make the needling worthwhile, but he’d seemed to relax too.

The job had gone well and it had been fun to all work together again. Eames had sunk deep enough into his forge to bury the sense of discomfort. They had gone out for drinks afterwards, all together, to celebrate, Eames swinging Ariadne up over his shoulder and carrying her, fists drumming uselessly onto his back, into the hotel bar. The row had carried them through three rounds of lethally strong cocktails.

They’d chatted on and Eames had considered that it hadn’t been so bad and that he was fortunate to be able to do this. By the fifth cocktail Ariadne had slumped back against the cushions. “Oh God, I’m so drunk! I can’t find my room key.”

“Have you looked in your bag?”

“I dunno? Wheres’s my bag?” she slurred.

Yusuf had dug her bag out from under the banquette and fished out the pass card for her hotel room. “You want me to help you back to your room?”

“I wan’ go to bed, ‘Yuf, m’tired.” Yusuf laughed and hauled Ariadne’s increasingly limp figure up from the table.

“It was very nice seeing you all!” he smiled cheerfully.

“Bye guys! Say bye to Arthur,” Ariadne murmured blearily.

“Drink some water,” said Eames. “Don’t let Yusuf into your room. The man’s an animal.” Laughing, the pair made their way off.

Arthur was still at the bar and Saito turned to Eames, “You have excelled yourself this week, Mr Eames. Very impressive.” Eames had looked over at him and seen a glimmer of a question in the man’s eyes. “Arthur seems like he could do with something to cheer him up. I have a friend, my cousin’s son, he is a photographer. He is a pleasant young man, I have thought before that he and Arthur would get along. Perhaps, sometime soon, I should arrange for them to meet, what do you think?”

Eames opened his mouth to reply only to find himself lost for words, torn between his urge to roar at Saito to keep his fucking twinkle-toes, millionaire, photographer playmates as far away from Arthur as possible and the paralysing thought that perhaps it would be good, at least, for Arthur to be happy with someone again.

“I thought so,” said Saito, nodding and smiling his enigmatic smile. “I will perhaps hold off for now. I think I will go to bed now. Please pass on my farewells to Arthur.”

“You’re not helping,” Eames called petulantly after him as he walked away. “You might think you are helping, but you aren’t!”

With Saito gone, Eames watched Arthur. He stood perfectly still and composed at the bar waiting to order. Eames watched him. He noted the way his wary gaze preserved a foot of empty space around him, and his casual pose belied the effort he was sustaining not to fold in upon himself.

When Arthur got back to their table, Eames passed on Saito’s regards and commandeered Saito’s drink for himself. Then, spontaneously, he found himself outlining a plan to head over to Japan in a couple of weeks. “Saito has a lodge up in the mountains. The architect’s just finished it. It’s supposed to be pretty fantastic, all cantilevered out over the void of a gorge, so it looks like it’s just floating when the mists come down.”

He threw in a couple of comments about a temple he thought Arthur would like to see. “Saito said he might invite some friends round, nothing fancy. He knows this guy, a photographer, he thinks you’d get on well together, you know, arty, thoughtful. He’s a nice guy, talented too, by all accounts. Might not be a bad way to spend a week?”

 _Bloody hell, I must be in love with him, if I’m prepared to shoot myself in the foot like this, just to see him looking less miserable_ , thought Eames. Then he caught up with his own thoughts and his stomach turned over, because he hadn’t actually thought that in so many words before.

He’d thought himself in love with other people before, of course. Just _liking_ things was too lukewarm and dramatically unsatisfying to really suit Eames. _I love this car, I love this shirt, I love Nadia, adore Graeme_ – basically variations on _I want that, mine._ With Arthur it wasn’t like that. At least, it had become different somewhere along the way, and he didn’t know what to do with it. _Fuck, maybe Saito had a point after all._

Arthur made some non-committal reply to the Japan plan and Eames had nodded, murmured something cheerful and incoherent and changed the subject, his mind reeling. It hadn’t been long after that that Arthur had got up from the table and swung his jacket over his shoulder.

“Think I’m gonna head off now. You walking my way?”

Part of Eames was gratified that, as far as Arthur was concerned, this job was just another job. Arthur hated things to get messy, which suggested that he hadn’t cottoned on to the emotional hoopla Eames had going on this week.

It was a tempting idea, to go with Arthur now, but there was no way his forge would stand it. Arthur’s eyes were already smokey as he gazed over, questioningly at him, and Eames could feel himself coming apart. The prospect was quite terrifying.

“Arthur, darling, I’m sorry! I’m flying straight out of here in a few hours. There are some things I need to do before the Spinner job.” And he’d smiled at Arthur, expansive and open, as if he had nothing whatsoever to hide. Arthur had smiled his small, tidy smile and left.

Eames put the Spinner job on hold for another week and fled back to Mombasa.

***

 

 _XI: Mombasa_

Thirty hours later, back on his roof terrace with two packets of cigarettes Eames decided to reason things through. OK. He was, it appeared, in love with Arthur. It was unfortunate, but there it was. He needed to come up with some way of dealing with it.

What he usually did, when he fell in love with someone, or what he had thought was falling in love with someone but what he now realised was more like some sort of attack of grabby acquisitiveness, was get them to fall in love with him. Basically, he’d research them, find out about their relationship history, the books or films they liked, all the little bits and pieces and then he’d make himself irresistible and get to take them home.

Well, he didn’t actually take them home because he never took anyone home, but he got them anyway. When he had had as much of them as he wanted, or occasionally when they had got tired of being overwhelmed by him, they parted ways and had nothing to do with one another ever again.

There were two flaws with this potential approach. One was that Eames knew he also really loved working with Arthur. Over the last few years he had got more and more impatient of the experience of working without Arthur; without someone who he could trust implicitly to have everything covered. He could rely on Arthur not to fuck up and if he ever did fuck up, he could trust him not to keep the matter to himself. He knew from experience that if Arthur needed backup from Eames, he would just ask for it. Loudly. With expletives. It was a fluid and highly effective working partnership and Eames didn’t want to contemplate his professional life without it.

His usual model wouldn’t do because it was not sustainable. You couldn’t become the ideal object of someone’s heart, pander to all their secret desires and prejudices, mirror their random enthusiasms and aspirations for all that long. It got tiring and it got boring and it had never been a problem before because the point hadn’t really been keeping anyone for very long.

The second flaw was that the idea of doing that to Arthur made him feel physically sick. He supposed that was the really being in love bit. Considering Arthur, too, the point about their never being able to work together again became somewhat moot, because Arthur _would_ kill him, once he’d figured out what Eames had done. Eames lit another cigarette.

OK, what did other people do when they were in love with someone? Well, they tried in other, more pedestrian, ways to get the object of their desire to love them back or they gave up and ‘moved on’.

The trouble was, he’d known Arthur for a long time. More crucially, Arthur had known _him_ a long time and had shown absolutely no inclination to fall in love with him. He knew Arthur respected him as a colleague and went for him as a good lay, but that was it. Arthur had made it clear, painfully clear, over the years that that was it. Eames had tried all the usual things, maybe not with total sincerity, but with a high level of convincingness. He’d smiled warmly and occasionally, after sex, with sloppy adoration at Arthur, made excuses to touch him continuously, he’d complimented him, he’d bought him gifts, lavished attention on him, told him jokes, fucked him like a pro, made a fool of himself for him and Arthur was still definitely not in love with him.

 _I really wanted someone else’s spunk in me as quickly as possible. Right up your street, I thought._

It was highly unlikely that after all these years, Arthur was suddenly going to change his opinion of Eames. So, ‘moving on’. That was what people did when they realised that the person they loved wasn’t going to love them back. They did that, Eames reasoned methodically, so they could ‘get over it’ and fall in love with someone else.

Eames found he didn’t really want to fall in love with anyone else. Once was bad enough. Besides, it had taken thirty-six years to happen the first time, which meant, statistically, that he wasn’t likely to fall in love with anyone else until he was seventy-two. He lit another cigarette and stared across the horizon of rooftops, now dark grey against the darkening sky and grimaced.

Self-pity wasn’t going to help him. He wasn’t like other people, so other people’s solutions weren’t going to help. He needed to come up with something that would work for him. He loved Arthur, he loved fucking Arthur, he loved working with Arthur. Arthur did not love him, but he did appear to enjoy working with him and he was not averse to fucking him. Two out of three wasn’t bad.

So, Eames reasoned, dragging on another cigarette, he needed to find a way of maximising what he had and learning to deal with the stuff he could do nothing about. In a certain light things had worked well in Washington. He and Arthur had worked alongside each other, to Arthur’s apparent satisfaction. Arthur had even offered to fuck him. The problems had been his own. He had struggled with the strength of his emotions, but he would handle that better now that he was clear about what was going on.

Now that he knew what the parameters were, what he could get from Arthur and what he could not, he could work on managing his expectations. Self-pity, hunger for love and hope were, he knew from professional experience, the most visceral and resistant to self-control of all human emotions. People thought hate was like that, but hate was eminently more harnessable. But he had years of professional experience, if he could take the self-pity and the hope out of the equation, he could manage what was left.

Self-pity was a phantom. It withered very quickly in the harsh light of day because, after all, why _should_ you get everything you want? What do you actually really deserve from life? It wasn’t as if the universe owed him Arthur’s love. If he kept on top of it he could discipline himself out of it.

The same with hope. That shouldn’t be too hard.

 _Are you out of your fucking mind? Right up your street._

Arthur prized loyalty above all other qualities, and Eames was known across the profession as someone whose loyalties could be bought. ‘The living dog’. Arthur was faithful and Eames had a girl or boy in every port. Arthur was self-contained and economical with his emotions, while Eames was sloppy, hyperbolic and expansive. Arthur valued accuracy, Eames was a born liar. While he was at it, he was also mouthy, handsy and a slob, both sartorially and in relation to housekeeping.

Eames crumpled up his empty cigarette packet and opened the next one. He needled at the pain in his chest. He knew he had to get everything out, prise out the smallest splinters of the hope that, somehow, Arthur would suddenly turn around and love him. While it was still there it would torment him. It would make it impossible for him to keep the other things: Arthur as a colleague, Arthur as a fuck, Arthur as a friend, prizes worth fighting for, so he kept digging relentlessly.

The bottom line was that Arthur knew him, possibly better than anyone else, and he didn’t find him lovable. None of the other people who had fallen in love with him had known him at all. Ari and Yusuf knew him quite well and they liked him, but they were careful to warn their friends off him romantically, he knew. Arthur knew him and liked him and that was that.

Eames breathed out a long plume of smoke. The stars were starting to come out and it was starting to get cold, but he didn’t want to go in. He dragged the dusty old rug that he sometime sunbathed on out from under the bench and wrapped it around his shoulders.

He felt like he was getting somewhere. He felt like he’d been hit repeatedly in the stomach with a golf club, but he was getting somewhere. He could feel his control over the situation growing. He had identified what he wanted and what he needed to do to get it and keep it.

He just wanted to keep on working with Arthur, going for occasional drinks with him, sometimes get to fuck him, though he knew that would change when Arthur met someone he was serious about. Well, he would deal with that when it came. He would ditch the self-pity and the hope and the hunger so he could enjoy what he did have and _not fuck it up._ He could do this. It didn’t matter what it cost really, because the alternative, of no Arthur in his life, was not worth contemplating.

He needed to get it right, he knew. If it raged out of control, as it nearly had in Mumbai and Washington, he’d be all washed up. Quite apart from the wallowing in misery, which sucked, Arthur wouldn’t stand for it. People liked the abstract idea of people they know being in love with them, but apart from very, very beautiful women who were just used to it, most people found the continued adoration of someone they did not want uncomfortable and eventually irksome. It made them uncomfortable because behind it, however well hidden, lay an insistent demand to be loved back. Adoration was essentially a form of supplication, Eames knew.

Arthur, particularly, wouldn’t be comfortable. He would withdraw. Leave the person alone to sort himself out and perhaps never come back. Certainly there would be no sex if he knew Eames felt like that. Keeping it quiet went for everyone else too because, stupidly, it would be the sort of thing they’d think Arthur should know about, or else they just wouldn’t be as good as Eames at keeping his secret.

He would work with Arthur and he would enjoy it. If he got the chance, he would sleep with Arthur and, God, he would enjoy that too! Now he knew what was going on, he could maintain vigilance against his feelings suddenly staging a coup and running off with his mouth.

 _I love you Arthur._

And he imagined Arthur’s scornful incredulity.

 _I’ve always loved you!_

And it wouldn’t even be true.

 _You are the one person who is real for me. The one person who I have ever really taken notice of, who has breached the walls of my ego and become necessary to me. In all my years you are the only person who has mattered to me, and I can feel myself starting to orbit my life around you._

And he could imagine the look of consternation on Arthur’s face; the flash of _Oh God, no!_ that he knew he’d see there. He could picture the pity and discomfort; the veiled annoyance that Eames had to go and fuck up Arthur’s pleasant, functional arrangements. He could hear the apology, that Arthur didn’t feel that way, and the curt suggestion that they not work together for a while.

Eames’ imagination was a blessing and a curse. The grimace Arthur would make was familiar to him. He would hope that Eames would get over it, that they could go back to where they were before. But Eames was very much afraid that he couldn’t, not after that. So this simply mustn’t happen. He had never felt compelled to tell the truth before, so it should be quite straightforward, shouldn’t it?

It was totally dark now and all Eames’ cigarettes were gone. Eames shivered under his blanket.

***

 _XII: Prague_

Eames’ plan was put to the test more thoroughly than he’d expected with the next job worked with Arthur. It was a small job, just a routine extraction of commercial data, so small in fact that the team was comprised of just Arthur, Eames and Ondrej. A quiet, lanky Czech architect.

Their mark, Tomas Cermakov, was the regional director of a European private bank. The Board had some doubts about his probity, but wished to avoid the bad publicity and loss of confidence that any leak of an internal investigation might engender. They’d hired a private investigator, but a new merger in the pipeline with auditors due had put the wind up everyone and they’d ended up being routed on to Arthur. Time was of the essence. Delicate balances of power were being negotiated and everyone was anxious not to be the chump standing there saying ‘yes, we did think he was maybe a little off’, when some outside agency has discovered large-scale fraud being carried out under your nose. They had finally pulled their collective finger out and then decided they wanted results fast, preferably yesterday.

“OK,” said Arthur standing by the whiteboard in the apartment they had taken in Prague. Eames thought that the whiteboard was perhaps overkill, as there were only three of them on the job and so they could have all looked at the same bit of paper, but Arthur had his method. Really, it was sort of cute.

Arthur looked better too. Like every month he put between himself and Mumbai was healing the wound. Eames knew Arthur would also be applying his sizeable reserves of self-discipline to erasing the entire episode, nay, his entire relationship with Tadeo from his personal memory bank. He’d heard Arthur’s last job in Singapore had been a real coup and had congratulated him on it on meeting that morning. Arthur’s brief absent-minded, satisfied little smile in response had warmed him to the core, because Arthur was back to taking his own success for granted, which was how it should be. Winners always know within themselves that they will win.

“We’ve got the reports from Weber Moritz’s PI who has been tailing Cermakov for the last month. Obviously, they haven’t found anything directly indicative of his potential criminal activities. All very sober and above board. No indication of an over-abundance of skeletons in his closet, so we’ll be running a general first level extraction, which should throw up something as significant as large-scale fraud. Eames, any thoughts from this on the angle?” Arthur asked, flapping the printout of the PI’s report.

“I’m going to need to watch him myself a little first, but going on the reports his social life is non-existant, apart from weekly Sunday lunches at the old family home, where his brother now lives with his wife. A smattering of lukewarm girlfriends in the background checks, nothing really convincing as a personal relationship outside of family. Could mean he’s queer. He’s a Catholic, works for a conservative institution, so you could be wrong about the skeletons. Just something to look out for.” Eames scratched his chin thoughtfully. Smooth. He hadn’t been able to stop himself showering and shaving after his flight and making a particular effort with his clothes, even as he berated himself for indulging in such pointless behaviour.

“I’d say the family was probably the best angle. Obviously important to him one way or another. Key people he’d want to conceal something from. Observing him at work would be pointless. If he’s up to anything, work is where he’ll _expect_ to be observed. It’ll be too difficult to get me into the family home. If you can get me cam footage of the next family meal this Sunday, I’ll rock it from there. Oh, and lift me some photo albums too, if you can, there’s a dear?”

“OK, done,” said Arthur. God, Eames loved working with Arthur!

“Ondrej, barring any surprising discoveries, we’ll be needing something local,” Arthur said turning his attention to the architect.

Eames chipped in again. “The family home would be a good bet. Childhood hidey holes, always a safe crack.”

Arthur nodded. “We’ll start with that provisionally. Ondrej see if you can pull the plans and start working on a mock-up.”

Three days later, sucked into the rhythm of the job, Eames found himself whistling tunelessly to himself as his re-watched the stolen footage of the Sunday lunch.

It was a sad fact that despite his ear for languages, Eames had been cursed with the inability to carry a tune. Didn’t stop him trying though, when he was in a good mood. It was a bright spring day in Prague, sunshine dappling in through the windows of the apartment. It had only been four days, so he had not yet reached capacity in terms of pork, dumplings and good lager. Arthur had his sleeves rolled up and a lock of hair falling delightfully in his face as he leaned over Ondrej’s drawings. Really, he observed to himself, he’d been getting his knickers in a twist over nothing. He’d be mad to jeopardize this for the dubious experience of being humiliatingly shot down by Arthur again.

“Stop that Goddamn whistling before I come over and stab you in the throat with this pencil!” barked Arthur.

“Mmm? What was that, darling?” asked Eames, removing his headphones.

Arthur sighed. “OK, what have you got?”

“Weeell,” reflected Eames, “I rather think he’s got a thing for his sister-in-law. Hard to be sure of course, as he’s obviously keeping it on the low low. There’s something else though, some sort of antagonism too. I think ... maybe something to do with the mother? I don’t know? Maybe a touch of resentment on her behalf about her being supplanted in the family home by a new bride? Potentially complicates things a bit, still, there was very consistent eye-line action, hovering proximity and an odd intensity to his compliments. I mean, no one likes Sauerkraut all that much. So all in all, I think that the sister-in-law angle is the strongest bet.”

“We could do something with that,” mused Arthur.

“It’s early days,” protested Eames, “I’d need to carry more observation of them all together to be sure.”

“Yeah, well we don’t have enough days for this to be early days,” Arthur replied. “Weber & Moritz want us in and out ASAP. They are only after an initial report as to whether anything is going on vis-à-vis the firm. If it is, they’ll consider sending us in for details, or they’ll just cut him loose and absorb the losses.”

“I suppose we could cobble together a job based on this,” Eames responded sceptically. “Something like a basic illicit object extraction. A love token from Anezka, or something that can be construed as such, which he then conceals to gloat over. If we set up the house, Sunday lunch smells, church bells, he’ll provide the family and I can go in as Anezka.”

“How’s the house going, Ondrej?” asked Arthur.

“Pretty good,” said Ondrej economically. “You want to come and check it out?”

“Sure, why not,” replied Arthur.

They hooked themselves up and emerged in the Chermakov dining room. Eames took a few minutes to soak up the feel of the place, while Arthur and Ondrej went over the finer details. Eames wondered across the hall into the kitchen. This is where Anezka prepares the lunch, he thought to himself. Extending a feeling of proprietary pride toward the orderly space, he ran his hand across the counter-top, re-arranged the cooking utensils in their earthenware jar and slipped into his forge.

It was a rough preliminary sketch of Anezka, visually quite like, but with only a generalised caricature of her mannerisms and speech patterns, as he could recall them from the recordings and his one afternoon following her. It was a starting point. He sank in deeper, adjusting the cut of the floral dress. Anezka dressed old for her age, as if by marrying a man fifteen or so years her senior she had herself left her youth behind her. Tomas was attracted to her. Eames couldn’t decide yet if he should ramp up the sex-appeal, add a drop of the sultry, or perhaps play up the girlish innocence. He’d have to think about which attribute would best match the distortion of a lover’s perception.

He tripped daintily back into the dining room carrying a meatloaf he’d dreamed up, shaking his head modestly as he set it on the table mimicking that little gesture to forestall praise he’d seen Anezka use. He beckoned Arthur and Ondrej to sit down at the table and invited Arthur to carve the meatloaf.

“What are you going to give Cermakov?” asked Arthur.

“I think I will give him a gift,” said Eames, still in character. “When I clear the table, he will help me take the dishes into the kitchen. When we are alone in there I’ll produce the gift, cuff links or something small, which I’ll have hidden in there. I’ll be a little flustered, blushing and faltering when I try to explain that I just saw them and was charmed by them and thought of him. It is a long time till his birthday, but I just wanted to give them to him. I’ll blush and laugh and exclaim that it is very silly and just a whim but at the same time give the impression than I am anxious whether he likes them or not. He should be flattered. If I’m right in my guess about his feelings for her, the present should be precious to him.

“I will ask him not to tell Franek as I really spent too much money on them and he has been getting at me for my spending. That should be enough to endow the object with value as ‘guilty secret’, with any luck then, it will be co-invested with the general character of any other guilty secrets he is carrying and you’ll simply need to follow him and retrieve it.

“We’ll need surveillance throughout the house, in case he has a cubbyhole here he’d like to leave it in. His own apartment is more likely, but then again, if he’s a cautious bugger he may be keeping evidence of his illegal activities quite pointedly _not_ in his own apartment. If he has an established stash-spot, it may well be here somewhere. Video surveillance then and at his apartment too. Potato salad?”

Arthur and Ondrej started to discuss building surveillance technology into the house form with minimal disruption and the best way to double back the maze to create the effect of the journey from his apartment to the house without making the dream-space unnecessarily roomy. Eames urged them to take seconds and fretted over whether his meatloaf was perhaps a bit dry.

“No it is delicious Anezka!” protested Ondrej. “I mean Eames. Damn! It doesn’t matter how well I know what’s going on, I can’t not be taken in by good forges.” Ondrej shook his head. “Don’t suppose you offer freebies for colleagues? It would make my mother so happy if she could believe, just for a few hours, that I was bringing a girl like Anezka home.”

“Taking Eames home to meet your mother would not be a course of action I could counsel,” said Arthur wryly.

“Arthur, I’m wounded!” exclaimed Eames, finally slipping fully out of Anezka and back into his own form and rolling his eyes histrionically at Arthur. “And all these years I have been harbouring the secret wish that you would one day realise I was worth more than a quick shag, marry me and take me home to meet your mother!” Eames paused in a parody of contemplation. “You do have a mother, don’t you?”

“Well, I wasn’t hatched from an egg, if that’s what you mean,” said Arthur rising from the table.

“No, I didn’t mean that. Though it has crossed my mind in the past that you might be some sort of escaped prototype bio-engineered super-soldier, in which case, it would have been the dearest wish of my heart that you marry me and take me to back Area 51 to meet your favourite lab technician, or whatever.”

“Eames, did you have a drink at lunch time?” Arthur asked suspiciously.

“No! Though Yusuf said that he’d made a few small adjustments to the dope he sent us. Said I might be subject to elevated moods.”

“Oh,” said Arthur, frowning. “He didn’t say anything to me.”

“Yes, I was supposed to pass it on. He said that in subjects of lighter build it might manifest in powerful feelings of arousal in the presence of their colleagues, so, you know, don’t hold back.”

Eames pantomimed a leer and Arthur shut his eyes in a ‘God give me strength’ manner, but Eames saw his lips twitch with the effort of suppressing a smile.

Stop clowning around, you prat! Eames exhorted himself. He knew a certain amount of banter would only be what Arthur expected, but he wasn’t sure any more whether he was hitting the right note. It was taking a surprising amount of self-control not to either moon at Arthur with his chin in his hands, like a school boy with a crush, or caper about just to tease a smile from him like, well, a school boy with a crush. Buggerit!

“OK what’s the minimum length of time you need to polish your forge?” Arthur asked, getting back to business. “Ondrej can have the set-up ready to roll in ... thirty-six hours.” Arthur quirked an eyebrow at Ondrej for confirmation.

“Relying on only that one bit of footage is iffy,” said Eames snapping his concentration back into gear. “I want to do at least one more stint of live surveillance first. If you judge the need to move with speed outweighs the risk of this all falling on its face, I think we’ll need to add a touch of unreality across the board, so I don’t stand out. If that’s the case, I think I can meet your thirty-six hour deadline.”

*

Ondrej had done a great job. The house was the same; utterly faithful in all the detail, but heightened somehow, distorted. Any oddities in Eames’ forge would, with any luck, be submerged beneath the general hallucinatory character of the whole dream.

Ah yes, I called this one right! Eames thought to himself as he ducked his head bashfully to avoid the heated gaze being levelled at him across the table. Cermakov’s projections of his brother and his mother were docile enough, though Eames was sure the real Franek wasn’t as tall or imposing in real life.

The meal progressed smoothly and as Eames began to clear the plates, Tomas rose to help him. They made a couple of trips to and fro and once they had returned to the kitchen, Eames asked Tomas to reach him down some bowls while he began to heat some cherry sauce.

“Tomas,” said Eames, turning away from the hob. “Tomas, this is very silly, but you see, I couldn’t resist.”

Eames played out his plan, retrieving a little, daintily wrapped parcel and twittering on about the shop in which he’d seen it and how the style and colour of the stone had just seemed so him. He watched eagerly as Tomas unwrapped the gift and examined the cuff links, he fluttered in a fever of anticipation as to whether Tomas liked them.

Tomas thanked him, but seemed strangely unresponsive, so Eames upped the ante a little, moving in closer and touching at Tomas’ hands and wrists and smiling softly up into his face, begging him to keep them secret.

Eames was beginning to think he had perhaps called it wrong and that perhaps Tomas’ feelings for his sister-in-law were the sort of theoretical infatuation that some people with a phobia of real intimacy indulged in and that the prospect of a real advance was proving simply terrifying. Still, it shouldn’t matter too much to the overall objective, the gift would still be loaded with guilt and fear and would be hidden away somewhere as planned.

He was completely unprepared then when Tomas’ face contorted with rage and he seized Eames, shaking his light frame. Eames staggered in his heels, his mouth gaping in not entirely feigned shock.

“You blood-sucking little harpy!” hissed Tomas, spit flecking through his clenched teeth. “It isn’t enough for you that you have Franek! That you have taken him from me! Now you are coming after me too! You are all the same – can’t keep away from men!”

Ah fuck – missed that. Wasn’t jealous of Franek, was jealous about him. Crap!

“Please, Tomas!” Eames whimpered.

Tomas clapped a hand over his mouth. Backing him across the kitchen, he kept up a stream of abuse in his ear about how Anezka was a man-eating whore who had torn his brother from his side; how she couldn’t keep her talons out of any man. He’d always known, he declared hoarsely, what she was, that she had no real heart in her. He’d had a plan, he told her, to free his brother of her forever. He’d been gathering together money and he was going to buy her. He’d known if the sum was high enough, she’d take it and leave forever.

Eames perked up. At least they had the confirmation they needed, so despite this cock-up the job wasn’t a dead loss. Tomas was ranting now that it was too late, that he couldn’t stand it a moment longer, he would free his brother now, at once. He gripped Eames around the throat.

Bugger – I hate being throttled, Eames thought as he scrabbled at Tomas’ hands. He kicked, but in Anezka’s form he didn’t stand a chance. He didn’t break forge though. It wouldn’t take all that long and Tomas may spill further useful information. Still, it wasn’t pleasant. It didn’t matter how much you knew that this wasn’t really death, you couldn’t persuade your body not to shriek at you that its systems were failing.

His vision was going black around the edges when he saw Arthur burst into the kitchen, his face flushed from the run from the surveillance van and raising a gun.

Eames woke on the couch in the bank director’s private sitting room. He coughed reflexively, massaging his throat and jaw. It was only half a minute later that Arthur and Ondrej stirred.

“Well, that went well,” said Eames sitting up. Arthur gave him a black look and started reeling the IV lines back neatly into the PASIV. “Oh come on Arthur, it wasn’t as bad as all that! We got what we needed, even if it was a bit more by luck than by design.”

Arthur didn’t deign to answer, as they cleared the job site and returned to the apartment to de-brief. Eames continued to remonstrate with Arthur. “Look, I know it wasn’t tidy, it wasn’t perfect, but you don’t get perfect with a rush job like this one. We got the job done.”

He was very tempted to add, ‘Honestly, I don’t know what’s eating you. I’m the one who got throttled,’ and milk the situation, now he knew he’d get a rise out of Arthur. But Arthur’s face was pinched into a frown already and suddenly Eames didn't feel like making a fuss.

“I pushed us too fast.” Arthur said, not listening. “Another twenty-four hours wouldn’t have done any harm and you might have narrowed down on the misgivings you had. I shouldn’t have pushed things,” he bit out.

“Hey, I was the one who cocked up!”

“Yes, but you told me you needed more time and I pushed you. We only got the information we needed through chance. I don’t like that.”

“I know you don’t, darling,” Eames smiled shaking his head. He felt almost overwhelmed by a wave of fondness. Arthur was such a perfectionist. The success of the job completely overshadowed for him by the sloppiness of its resolution. He wanted to kiss him so damned much. Some of what he felt must have coloured his voice because Arthur looked over at him curiously.

To cover himself, Eames rattled on. “Really Arthur, what does it matter? I made a mis-call and, yes, I’d have caught it given more time, but deciding to deploy as quickly as possible was a legitimate decision. The house was perfect, the set-up was all very slick and we got what we needed anyway. No harm done, money’s in the bank and one fraudulent banker with unresolved obsessive, incestuous possessive urges is out of a job.

“More importantly,” Eames exclaimed gesturing expansively out of the window. “We’ve finished well ahead of schedule and have two days to relax in Prague. You go call Weber & Moritz, Ondrej and I will finish the clear out and then we can go for a walk along the Vlatava and you can vent your wrath making bitter and snide comments about all the British stag and hen parties and the middle-aged couples here on romantic mini-breaks.”

Seeing Arthur beginning to let go of his angry stiffness, Eames continued. “I know what would make you feel better: a nice fight. I’m sure I can find you nine or ten Scousers in matching T-shirts printed with boobies for you to knock about.”

Arthur smiled over at Eames. “Tempting,” he said. “Look, I’m going to make that call. There’s no need for you guys to hang around. I’ll finish the clean-up. Great job, both of you.”

Farewells were exchanged, though Eames had no intention of leaving before Arthur. When Arthur returned from making the call, Ondrej had gone. Arthur still looked slightly tense and dissatisfied.

“Hey,” said Eames, slipping from his perch on the desk and coming over to him where he stood by the window. “How about we forget about those Scousers and just head back to the hotel?”

“What?” Arthur asked, taking a minute to catch up with Eames’ flow of thought. Eames felt a bit exposed, with the daylight streaming in the window and with no after-job drinks to ease him in. It wasn’t that he’d never propositioned Arthur sober and in daylight before. Just mostly not with any degree of seriousness.

He saw the frown of a negative crease Arthur’s features. “Mmm?” he murmured coming to stand up close beside him and run his fingers roughly up through the short hairs on the back of Arthur’s neck. “Come on,” he breathed in a low voice. “Iz good for relax!,” he said, parodying the enticements of the touts outside the lap-dance clubs nearby.

He heard Arthur’s small huff of amusement before he turned and kissed him. God! It was just as good as he’d thought it would be. Being around Arthur, he’d concluded a few days ago, was brilliant. His presence always infinitely preferable to his absence. Being able to touch Arthur, to smell the light scent of sweat and cologne on his warm skin; the slick, smooth slide of Arthur’s tongue against his own was intoxicating.

Without another thought he’d wrapped his arms around Arthur, propelling him back against the window. He could feel the hard planes of Arthur’s shoulders through the fine wool of his jacket, and the firm strength of his thighs pressed up against his.

Pulling back slightly from the kiss and opening his eyes, Eames saw the sunlight streaming in the window was highlighting Arthur’s normally dark hair with gold. Gold in his eyelashes too. Arthur ran his hand appreciatively down Eames’ neck and across his broad shoulder and smiled a lazy, hungry smile. God, Eames loved that smile.

“See,” he said, “you’re feeling more relaxed already.”

“I don’t know,” said Arthur, still smiling. “I think I could still be a bit tense.”

“Well, we can’t be having that,” Eames chided in a low voice, moving to nuzzle Arthur’s neck and slid his hand across his stomach to undo the fastening of his trousers. Finding Arthur hard for him, he felt another powerful surge of emotion.

He hadn’t suffered a moment’s doubt about his own sexual allure since he was fourteen, but it felt somehow momentous that Arthur should respond to his kiss like this. He clamped down on the urge to say something about how gorgeous Arthur was. It was stupid really. He had surely told Arthur that he loved him, adored him, worshipped him, during the throes of sex before now. Eames was a talker. Extravagant endearments, compliments and praise as well as inventive dirty talk were part of the package.

He fell to his knees before Arthur, in a graceful, submissive, adoring gesture. And he had done this before too. To Arthur and to many others, relishing the power that this apparent divestment of power offered him. He knew how much men had appreciated seeing a man of his strength and confidence kneeling before them. And, because he had always been good at what he did, it looked exactly the same when he did it now out of a genuine desire to worship and adore. He’d always liked giving head. Was good at it too. At least, with his mouth full, he couldn’t say anything stupid.

It was erotic in a different way than before. His partner’s pleasure had always been both a point of pride and a self-gratifying extension of sexual power. You didn’t get that good at controlling other people’s responses and wringing from them whatever emotion you desired unless you really enjoyed what you were doing. It was the crucial difference between ‘I want to make you moan, so I can hear you and know that I did this to you’ and simply immersing yourself in their pleasure and finding it more than enough.

Eames took his time, because he didn’t know for certain when he might get another chance, and though every inch of Arthur was perfect, right down here between his slightly trembling thighs was best of all. When Arthur finally came, Eames found to his surprise that he couldn’t wait a moment longer and taking himself out of his trousers he came too, with a few quick strokes, on the floor between Arthur’s feet.

He rested his forehead against Arthur’s thigh, trying to recover, as his heart pounded in his chest. He was so fucked.

After a minute of trying to collect himself, he got to his feet and leaned against the window sill next to Arthur, who seemed in no hurry to straighten himself up, but leaned with his head tilted back to rest against the glass. He was unbelievably beautiful.

“Looking a bit more relaxed now,” Eames observed, his voice rough.

Arthur swung his head languidly sideways to grin at him, his cheeks and lips flushed. “I don’t know. I think I may just be suffering still from some, ah, residual tension. I think I better take you back to my hotel room. Just to be on the safe side.”

For a moment Eames was just flat out terrified because he wasn’t sure he could take much more of this, and desperately wanted to just run away. He cleared his throat. Through his confusion, some still-functioning part of his brain managed to telegraph the message:

Arthur is standing next to you, rumpled, flushed and delicious, asking to have sex, you utter, utter pillock. This is not a point for negotiation.

So of course he just smiled and followed Arthur back to his hotel.

*

In the end, they’d spent a day and half together in Prague, mostly in bed, but with a couple of meals out. It had been an odd mixture of delightful and excruciating. He knew how to control his tone of voice, keep things light and casual. On the flight on to Dubai he’d reflected that it had gone pretty well, all in all. He’d got what he’d set out to achieve: working with Arthur, spending time with him, getting to touch him, kiss him, getting into his bed.

He would get better at it, after all, he reasoned. He would get better at gauging when he was getting too close, when he needed a little distance, to remind himself of the parameters of the relationship.

“What’s up with you, Eames? What do you want?” Arthur had asked him as they walked through the narrow cobbled streets to the restaurant the concierge at the hotel had recommended. Eames had asked what he meant, warily and Arthur had said, waving his hand to conjure something indistinct, “you’re being, you’re being all … _sweet_. It’s unnerving.”

Eames had just laughed and rattled off a line about how the city was a romantic one, that he was in a good mood and how Arthur knew he could never resist an atmosphere. “It’s a city for lovers. You can’t blame me for getting a little carried away. I hate to be out of step with my milieu. You don’t mind do you? I can stop if it’s getting on your nerves.”

Arthur had looked put out and Eames had taken that to mean that it was getting on his nerves, so he had toned it right down.

***

 _XIII: Milan_

And it had worked, more or less. They worked with one another when Arthur called, just as before. After eighteen months Arthur still hadn’t found anyone else serious, for which Eames was infinitely thankful.

It was hot in Milan. Eames was stripped down to his vest and gratified to note Arthur’s eyes shoot over to him occasionally when he stretched in his chair. He knew Arthur liked his shoulders and the muscles of his back, and made sure Arthur got as much of an eyeful as he cared to take. God, he was looking forward to getting Arthur good and sweaty!

“So, said Paola their architect, “you seeing anyone at the moment, Eames? Only, I was speaking to Amanda the other day and she said she reckoned you must finally have someone serious.”

Eames snorted dismissively, shooting a wary gaze over at Arthur and finding him looking up intently at Paola. “Amanda doesn’t know what she’d talking about!” he snapped.

“Really?” said Paola, who was bright and competent and sadly lacking in certain self-preservation skills. “Because she said Spinner had brought in this hot little chemist, straight out of Harvard and cute as a button, and she was sure you were going to eat him up in one bite, but you didn’t even though he was making eyes at you the whole time?”

“He was just irritating,” Eames said repressively.

“And,” said Paola prattling on obliviously, “she said she’d heard from Margarita, who was all pissed because you didn’t take her up on her offer of a couple of days together at the end of the job, and she’d turned down some other work to keep the days free and everything?”

“I like to keep people on their toes. It’s not like I offer a guaranteed fuck with every contract, for Christ’s sake!” Eames was annoyed now. He toyed briefly with throwing out a suggestion that there was someone back in Mombasa he might be getting serious about, to keep the speculation off target, but decided against it. Arthur might not like the idea of being complicit in Eames cheating on someone if he was supposed to be in a real relationship.

“It’s like living in a fucking village! It isn’t Amanda’s or anyone else’s business who I choose to fuck or not. All right? Maybe I’ve just stopped fucking colleagues because none of you can keep your damn mouths shut!”

“No offence meant!” said Paola raising her eyebrows.

Later that night, when Eames had lifted Arthur up, shoving him against the wall of a deserted side street and sucking kisses on his neck, Arthur had laughed and said, breathlessly, “Thought you weren’t fucking colleagues any more?”

“Always make an exception for you, darling,” Eames had exhaled into his ear, grinding against him.

***

 

 _XIV: Lagos_

“Arthur, it’s Eames.” Eames didn’t usually call Arthur. Didn’t ever call Arthur actually, but this was a job he thought he wouldn’t touch without Arthur alongside him. Besides, it seemed like the sort of thing he might like.

“Eames?” Arthur sounded a bit surprised.

“Hello, well, I wanted to talk to you about a possible job. Cobb gave me this number. I hope it isn’t inconvenient?”

“You called Cobb?”

“Yes, the last number I had for you was shut down.”

“Oh.”

“Anyway, I’ve got a job. Or an offer of a job from a friend of mine. It’s a bit unusual. Part extraction, part other stuff, a bit outside of my area of expertise to be honest and a bit larger in scale. Thought I might sound you out, suggest he take on both of us. I don’t really think I want to accept it without someone else on board I know for certain can hack it.”

“Who’s it for then?”

“Wale Etim”

“Wale Etim? Wait, Wale Etim is a friend of yours?”

“Yeah, pretty much.”

“You keep some seriously dubious company, Eames.”

“Well, you know. Once you’re on Wale’s radar you have the choice of being his friend, his minion or ceasing to be on anyone’s radar, permanently.”

“And you think I want to be introduced to a man like that?”

Eames laughed warmly. “You aren’t afraid of men like Wale, Arthur. You eat men like him for breakfast.”

“Seriously Eames. I’ve heard about Wale Etim. You telling me that’s all rep and really the guy is just a big kitten. That thing in Luanda?”

“Ah, no. Well, a bit of it is rep, but Wale’s no kitten. He’s fucking terrifying actually.”

“If even half of what I’ve heard is true, the man is a total psychopath.”

“He’s a big man round here. His methods are … dramatic, but he’s not some twitching nut case. I mean, he’s not nice, or anything. Like I said, pretty fucking terrifying, but he‘s stable. You can work with him, so long as you’re are clear about what you can and can’t do right from the start. Show respect. Get the job done. Get the fuck out of there.”

“You make it sound so tempting,” said Arthur drily.

“I haven’t mentioned anything to him yet. Just thought I’d sound you out. But if you don’t …”

“No, it’s OK, go ahead.”

Eames paused. Maybe he shouldn’t do this. Maybe Arthur had a point and he wasn’t doing him any favours introducing him to Wale. It had just never occurred to Eames to try and protect Arthur from anything. Ever. He wasn’t over-burdened with much of a nurturing instinct in the first place. He usually just gauged how much people could cope with and warded them away from anything he thought they couldn’t handle when the blast radius was likely to take him down too.

“Um, maybe you’re right. Wale’s not a great man to work for.”

“Come on Eames. You thought I can handle it.”

“I know you can handle it. I don’t even want to imagine shit that you can’t handle.”

“Really?” said Arthur, sounding oddly flattered.

“It’s just,” Eames went on. “Maybe I’m not a great judge of that sort of thing.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean,” Eames said in a rush, not at all sure he should say anything, but suddenly needing to. “I should have said something about Tadeo.”

“What about Tadeo?” Arthur’s voice was suddenly icy cold.

“I didn’t know anything!” Eames stumbled to clarify. “I just didn’t like him and I should have said something to you.”

“You made it clear that you didn’t like him,” Arthur said stiffly, the tension sliding slowly out of his voice.

“No, well, I still … I didn’t have any proof but. I should have said something.”

“You aren’t making sense Eames. What are you trying to tell me?” Arthur’s voice was running cold again.

Crap! Eames thought, why did I open my fucking mouth? But he had to go on now. “I didn’t know anything, but he came on to me, one time, back in São Paulo. He was just taunting me because I knew, or thought I knew, he wasn’t straight up and because I couldn’t do anything about it. Nothing happened, he just, like I said, taunted me a bit and so I knew he was a little shit, but I didn’t say anything.”

“I wouldn’t have believed you anyway,” said Arthur after a pause, his voice low and devoid of emotion.

“I knew you wouldn’t believe me and I knew you’d find out eventually and deal with it, which you, ah, did. But … but, I should have at least tried, you know? It might have put you on your guard at least a bit. It was shit of me, not to even try.”

There was a long awkward silence. Fuck, fuck fuck! thought Eames wretchedly. Now he won’t call me for months.

“I still wouldn’t have believed you,” said Arthur, his voice pinched with tight misery. “You know,” he said, after a pause, “I thought it wasn’t so bad, because everyone else had been taken in too, that I wasn’t just a total idiot, but you knew.”

“I didn’t know,” said Eames quietly. “And everyone else _was_ taken in too. He was good. A real pro. Like me. I’m the one who should have been able to tell and I was looking for months and didn’t see any cracks. It was only when he _let_ me see, because he knew I couldn’t touch him. Because he knew I’d be too big a coward to tell you anyway.”

 _There was another long silence. It dragged on uncomfortably._

 _“So, anything else? Seeing as this is your day for confessions,” Arthur had finally said, with a weak attempt at levity._

 _“Well,” said Eames, jumping at the lifeline. “I want to apologise for sleeping with José, even though I knew you sort of had your eye on him.”_

 _“José?” said Arthur, briefly taken aback. “Eames, that was four years ago! And anyway, I didn’t want to fuck José.”_

 _“What? You were looking at him all the time!”_

 _“I was looking at him, because he looked like Mercedes, but he said wasn’t related to her, but he really did look like her. I found out afterwards he was her baby cousin, actually.”_

 _“José was Mercedes’s cousin? Shit! I wouldn’t have touched him if I’d known that.”_

 _“You wouldn’t have touched him if you’d known he was Mercedes’s cousin, but you fucked him even though you thought I liked him?”_

 _“Yeah,” said Eames shamefacedly. “Even went out with him on and off for three months after so you wouldn’t think I was a shit for fucking him just ‘cause you wanted to.”_

 _“Really?” Arthur queried, disbelieving._

 _“Yeah.”_

 _“You are such a shit, Eames.”_

 _“Yeah,” said Eames resignedly. “You know, I wondered why I stopped getting any work from Mercedes.”_

 _Arthur let out a sharp bark of laughter and Eames relaxed._

 _“What about this job then?” Arthur asked, clearly deciding that sharing time was over, much to Eames’ relief._

 _“OK,” began Eames, outlining the job._

 _“You are in way over your head,” said Arthur, when he had finished. “That’s not a job, that’s a small scale invasion.”_

 _“I thought you’d like it,” said Eames happily._

 _Arthur hummed noncommittally. “If we can get Hendrick in to take care of the explosives and a decent helicopter pilot, it might work.”_

 _“Wale’s guys will manage all the close combat. It’s just the logistics I can’t manage on my own.”_

 _“Well, you talk to Mr Etim. Soonest I can be in Lagos is Tuesday.”_

 _“You want some time to think about it?”_

 _“Don’t start trying to look out for me, Eames,” said Arthur wryly. “You’re terrible at it.”_

 _“All right, Arthur,” Eames said relieved. “I’ll talk to Wale tonight and let you know.”_

 _“Should I come carrying? Only, I’ll have to come via Marrakesh if I need to gear up.” Arthur asked._

 _“Oh absolutely! You’ll be stripped of weapons when you go to meet him of course, but it’s good to leave a substantial array with the minions. The shinier and more expensive the better, shows you mean business. I practically clink when I walk when I’m working with Wale. The only things I leave at home are my stab vest, because it doesn’t work with machetes, and my little whistle for attracting attention, because no one would come.”_

 _“Good to know what I’m letting myself in for,” said Arthur. “I’ll wait for your call. Goodnight Eames.”_

 _It was only after Arthur had hung up that Eames worked out it was 4am where Arthur was in Jakarta._

 _*_

 _“Well, that went well!” Eames commented brightly as he vaulted up into the already hovering helicopter beside Arthur._

 _Arthur’s face was blackened with smoke and there were scorch marks across the back and right sleeve of his jacket. “I am never taking a job on your suggestion again. Seriously, Eames!” he groused, but the grin he flashed Eames was wild with adrenalin and suppressed laughter._

 _***_

 _  
_XV: Kyoto_   
_

“So, you and Arthur …” said Yusuf conversationally, unhooking Eames from the PASIV.

There had been a bit of a local scandal surrounding Yusuf’s Somnacin den in Mombasa after a local police chief had tried to deflect attention away from some other dodgy dealings by orchestrating a public crack-down. It had become politic for Yusuf to make himself scarce, and Saito had set him up with a lab in Kyoto, where he was working on some experimental compounds promoting endorphin release to suppress projection hostility. He’d been there three months and had finally managed to prevail upon Arthur and Eames to come and share the benefit of their experience and comment on his work.

It was relaxing work, running scenarios with an array of test subjects, while Yusuf monitored them closely and tweaked his formula.

At least it had been relaxing. Eames tensed up. “What about me and Arthur?” he said tightly.

“Well,” said Yusuf mildly, “you seem to be getting on, that’s all.”

“We always get on, Yusuf,” said Eames, with as much finality as possible.

“There used to be a lot more shouting and intermittent throwing of missiles, allegations of sexual assault, that sort of thing.”

“Maybe we’re mellowing in our old age.” Eames stared threateningly at Yusuf for a minute, then snatched up his jacket and left.

It had been just over two and a half years since that night on his rooftop in Mombasa. Nothing much had changed. Business was good, though Eames chose to leave himself bigger breaks between jobs. It didn’t get his goat, like it used to, when he heard of some bright, up-and-coming forger who might just manage to run the odd game as good as Eames. It was easier to turn down work you didn’t want when there were other, decent options for people to go to, and some of the people Eames worked with didn’t really like taking no for an answer.

He took jobs with Arthur when they were offered, and it was always the same mixture of pleasure and discomfort. But it was familiar and nothing he couldn’t handle. He’d laid to rest the fear that he’d crack and decide it was unbearable and that he had to stop working with Arthur. He could take it, and it was worth it, and that was it. Sooner or later Arthur would meet someone he was really serious about and Eames would have to take a step back, but he could deal with that too.

He didn’t go back to the lab that day. He’d have to come up with something to tell Yusuf. Not the truth, obviously, but something to get him to leave it all alone. Perhaps he shouldn’t have come. A week without the pressing focus of a real job, with just him and Arthur and Yusuf, who knew him too well, was pushing his luck. It had been too tempting. Saito was out of town, but returning at the weekend. Ariadne was flying in for the weekend too. Even Cobb had arranged to have someone watch his kids and was going to come over to join them.

Eames headed back to the lab the following afternoon. He still didn’t have a good story for Yusuf, but he thought staying away any longer would just serve to make Yusuf more certain he had touched a nerve. When he walked in he knew immediately something was wrong. Arthur was pacing by the window. His hair was uncharacteristically dishevelled, as if he’d been running his hands through it.

Yusuf stood warily by his lab bench and he shot Eames an anxious look as he entered. “Look, I’m going to leave you two here to sort this out. Please, please don’t break any of my equipment.” Looking between the two of them, he appeared to decide that the chances of this were not great. He scooped the computer with his results logs up off his desk and cradled it to his chest as he hurried out of the room.

“What’s going on?” Eames asked, his eyes darting from Yusuf's departing figure to Arthur vibrating with tension across the room. “Arthur?”

Arthur looked fiercely uncomfortable. “Yusuf says that you ... He says that you are in love with me,” Arthur said accusingly, staring at Eames with fixed intensity.

“What?” said Eames, momentarily blindsided. “What the fuck would Yusuf know? I mean ...he’s just surprised we’re getting on as well as we are, less shouting and all that.” Eames snorted out a brief, dismissive laugh and shook his head, his mind working double time. “He doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”

Arthur’s eyes narrowed and he stared at Eames, assessing him. Eames looked him straight in the eye, smiled easily and shook his head again and shrugged.

“You know,” said Arthur slowly, “you’re really good at that, but Yusuf showed me your charts.”

Eames opened his mouth, only to find he had nothing to say. “He ... what?” he finally managed.

“Yusuf said he’d had his suspicions some time ago, but this last week he kept getting anomalies in your readings. You know, your temperature and endorphins and everything. He investigated and discovered a strong correlation. He found your endorphins and heart rate spike when you see me. He said he can tell, just from your stats and blood chemistry, the exact moment you meet with me in the dream.”

Eames felt his blood turn to ice in his veins. “That’s bollocks!”

“That’s what I thought, at first, but he took me through everything. Even you can’t fake that shit.” Arthur grimaced uneasily and looked out of the window.

Well, there it was. Arthur finally knew and he was upset and uncomfortable, just like Eames knew he would be. So, it was all over, the nice, easy, well, not easy, but precious relationship they’d had these last two years.

Eames swallowed. “Yusuf had no right to show you that,” he said in a low voice. “But look, really, it doesn’t have to be a big deal!” Eames threw his hands out in a gesture of admission. “I like you, but I know nothing is going to happen and I’m cool with that. I can handle it.”

Shit, this was a difficult one to play. Eames tried for friendly, rueful, with just a bit of earnestness thrown in. Like he’d been caught out, called on some minor slip up, prepared to admit the fault and promise it wouldn’t happen again. Keeping things casual was the main thing. “It’s not a new, um, issue for me, but I’m handling it. I’m happy with how things are, with us working together, being friends, whatever works for you. I’ve made sure it hasn’t been a problem. Things don’t have to change.” He wasn’t sure he could quite keep the note of pleading from creeping in.

Arthur’s eyes were wide. “You’ve felt like this for years?”

“Look, I’m sorry,” said Eames offhandedly, “but really it’s fine. I just didn’t want to fuck everything up, make you uncomfortable. I didn’t see the point so I kept quiet about it.”

“And what were you planning to do if I got serious about someone else?”

“Well, I know that’s going to happen some time. I don’t know. I’ll fucking hate it, but I’ve fucking hated it every time you got serious with someone else, and it never stopped you before.” Eames tried for a flippant laugh. “I’ll just have to deal with it, won’t I? It doesn’t need to be a problem. We can not work together for a bit maybe, while I get used to the idea and then it will be fine.”

“You weren’t planning on saying anything ever? You made completely sure that I couldn’t tell. That I wouldn’t ever be able to tell. That was it? That was your plan?”

“Yes!” cried Eames, exasperated. “It was a perfectly good plan too, before Yusuf fucked everything up! We’re getting along great. I really like working with you. We’re a fucking great team. Look, if it bothers you, we can drop the sex. You know. Probably a good thing anyway. Get you out there again. Find someone else. But it really, really doesn’t mean we can’t work together! Can’t, you know, be mates ... colleagues, whatever!”

Arthur gazed at Eames with an unreadable expression. “You think you’ll just be cool with that?”

“Yes! I’ll be cool with that. I’ve been cool with it the last two years. Jesus, I’m not a school girl! It’s perfectly straightforward. I feel what I feel, but you don’t feel that way and that’s fine. I’ll be ready to move on before I’m seventy-two anyway.”

Arthur, who had been going to say something, stopped and stared. “Seventy-two? What?”

“Ah,” said Eames, slightly shamefaced now because he really hadn’t meant to say that last bit out loud. “It took me thirty-six years to, um, this,” he said, gesturing between them. “So, I sort of worked out that, ah, statistically speaking ...”

Arthur blinked. “So,” he paused. “So your plan is what? You are going to make sure you are ready to move on for when you are about seventy-two and due to fall for someone else?”

Eames nodded a little mulishly.

“You don’t think,” said Arthur, a smile ghosting across his lips, “that you might need to factor in an improvement in performance the second time around? Because, you know, you are a very quick study and I think you might need to take that into account, ‘statistically speaking’.”

Eames was too pleased that Arthur was mocking him, and therefore seemed likely to let this go, to take umbrage. He grinned at Arthur. “You know, you’re right. I should probably start getting prepared for it when I’m about, what would you say, fifty-eight?”

“I think that would be prudent,” said Arthur, his lips shaking in an effort not to laugh.

“It’s wicked to mock the afflicted, you know,” said Eames, his voice humming with relief, because Arthur was OK with this, he wasn’t going to insist on not working with him any more. He wasn’t going to do that thing where he just dropped off the map and didn’t contact him for months on end.

Eames smiled and was totally unprepared for Arthur striding over to him, seizing the back of his neck and kissing him. Taken totally by surprise, he wrapped his arms around Arthur and held him tight, kissing him back, so thankful that Arthur was letting him.

“I’m sorry,” he said quickly, when Arthur pulled back from the kiss. He dropped his arms, tucking his hands into his back pockets, as if to stop himself touching Arthur again. He bounced lightly on the balls of his feet, fighting down the urge to grab Arthur again and never let him go.

“I’m glad you’re OK with this.” Eames smiled. He really needed to go away somewhere and have a discreet hysterical episode in private, because though this had gone better than expected, he felt like he’d been run over by a train. He couldn’t show Arthur any of this. That was the point, he’d promised Arthur that he could cope and Arthur was still standing too close to him, gazing at him quizzically.

“You are so damn sure that I wouldn’t want anything to do with you?” Arthur asked, with that look on his face, that twisted, wry little look that Eames had never, never understood. Arthur cupped his cheek and ran his thumb across Eames’ mouth and Eames couldn’t prevent a shudder running through him.

“You know for certain that I don’t want you?” Arthur said softly. “What about the way I take you back to my hotel room and let you fuck me?”

“I’m a good lay,” Eames replied roughly. “I know you think I’m a good lay. That’s OK,” and he cleared his throat. “That’s OK, we can still do that, if you want to.”

Arthur kissed him again, slowly and intently. Eames strained forward into the kiss but kept his hands firmly anchored in his back pockets.

“You are a good lay,” said Arthur finally, softly and fondly. “You are also completely fucking retarded. Do you know that? Yusuf didn’t just decide out of nowhere to share this with me. He’s your _friend_ , he wouldn’t just drop you in it like that. He told me because he says he despaired of us sorting it out on our own.” Arthur looked down at the floor, his face twisting momentarily in consternation. “He told me because he can see the same thing on my charts,” he muttered.

“What?” said Eames, his brain stuttering to a halt.

“Eames, you stupid, stupid ...” Arthur leaned his forehead against Eames’, wrapping his arms loosely around Eames’ shoulders. “You’re wrong. I ... You’re just wrong.”

Eames ventured to take one hand out of his pocket and run it lightly down Arthur’s side before catching compulsively at Arthur’s waist. “Arthur?”

Arthur pulled him closer still, kissing him fiercely. “Fuck, Eames. You fuck!”

“I’ve made rather a Horlicks of this, haven’t I?” Eames whispered when Arthur finally released him.

“What? Yes. I guess we both could have handled this better, maybe,” and Arthur twitched a grin. “But, hey, we’ve got about twenty years to work at it before your next go round.”

“Arsehole!” Eames laughed softly, letting his other arm come up and tug Arthur’s body tight up against him in an enormous bear hug. “I’ve changed my mind. I am never going through this again,” he murmured into Arthur’s hair.

“Well, you are shit at it,” Arthur conceded, his voice muffled in Eames’ neck. “Twenty years might not be enough.”

“Why the fuck didn’t Yusuf tell me about this?”

“Well, he said he wanted to, but he was afraid that if you didn’t handle telling me right, I would actually kill him. To be fair, I probably would have. I’ve spent years, more years than you pretending not to ...,” Arthur laughed hoarsely. “Guess we’re both a little too good at saving face.”

“Christ, Arthur!” Eames moaned, “come here!”

***

 _Epilogue_

“So I told him, this plan is never going to work. I mean, the mark was never going walk into a set-up like that on his own,” Eames said confidently. “If you want to catch a cop, you have to think like a cop.”

“Oh yeah?” said Mitchell looking up from his plan. “And I suppose you know all about how cops think then?”

“Well, I did spend four years with the Met,” Eames said. “You pick up a thing or two.”

“You were never a policeman!” Mitchell exclaimed incredulously.

“Well no. That would have involved spending two dire years trudging the beat. No, I was a civilian consultant. It was my first job out of uni. I did my degree in psychology at Cambridge, you see, and my supervisor did consultative work for Serious Crimes. They were looking for fresh blood and it seemed like an interesting line of work.”

Mitchell still looked sceptical, but Eames could tell he was winning him round. “I did profiling and interview analysis mostly. You know, looking at recordings of interviews and telling the cops when the suspect was lying. It’s why I’m such a good liar,” Eames grinned. “You got to know how criminals think and how the boys in blue think – both useful assets these days. I even did some undercover work. Not strictly above board as I wasn’t an officer, but they swore me in as a special constable. It wouldn’t have been admitted in court or anything, we just needed to know what was and I had the right skills for it. There was this one case, a people trafficking ring …”

Eames was in mid-flow when Arthur returned. “How’s it going? Can you wrap up what you’re doing so I can brief you both on the latest surveillance in a couple of minutes?”

“Oh, hi Arthur!” said Mitchell brightly. “Did you know Eames used to be with the police? I would never have believed it.”

“Eames with the police?” Arthur said flatly, turning to give Eames a long look. Eames shrugged and shot him a wink. He had tried to point out, when Arthur had outlined his plan to try this new young architect, that child-minding wasn’t his strong suit.

“I’m going to have to make it a standard element in my initial briefings aren’t I?” Arthur said, turning back to Mitchell. “Mitchell, unless it is directly relevant to the success of the job, you are not to listen to a damn word Eames says. Understood?”

 _Fin_


End file.
